
Gass_ &**R 
Book_j_Gc3_ 







Acts of the 

Republican Party 

as seen by 

History 



By 
C. GARDNER 



1906 



Acts of the 

Republican Party 

as seen by 

History 



C. GARDNER 



THE EDDY PRESS CORPORATION 
WINCHESTER, VA. 



I906 



£ 



-/ 



INTRODUCTION. 

Lest We Forget ! 

It is not for the purpose of controversy that this paper 
is prepared, but that the facts of history of our Southern 
country may not be forgotten. The memory of the heroic 
acts of Southern men and women during the sixties of the last 
century is very dear to Southern hearts today, but that memory 
is fast fading away, and it is very dim in the rising generation. 
We are zealous in keeping fresh the trials and sufferings of 
"the men of seventy-six," that their brave deeds may incite the 
youth of our land to emulate them. We of the South, for the 
same reason, would keep fresh the memory of the greater deeds, 
suffering, and heroism of our men from I860 to 1870 — a cen- 
tury later. The constant reading of the word "rebel" applied 
to men of the South in Northern literature leads even Southern- 
bred boys to adopt it, sometimes with pride, but more often 
through ignorance. They do not know that from first to last 
it was a false and unjust appellation as to their people, and 
should be repelled with scorn. We were no rebels, but freemen 
fighting for our liberty. 

The educated North has changed much in the last few 
years, and today looks upon the course of their section from 
'60 to '70 with much disapproval. A prominent Republican 
and an ex-Union soldier recently said to the writer: "I look 
back upon my former sentiments on these questions with aston- 
ishment; I can't understand how I could ever have thought as 
I did." Could any Southern man write more beautifully of our 
dead than a Northern Republican recently wrote? "Early last 
Autumn, while spending a few days in Richmond, I visited the 
beautiful cemetery of Hollywood, and there, with uncovered 
head, paid silent homage to the dust of those brave heroes of the 
Lost Cause whose memory is preserved by that rude pyramid 
of stone which loving hearts and strong hands have combined 
to rear to the glory of the military achievements of the Con- 

(iii) 



INTRODUCTION' 



federate soldier. Continuing on my way in that silent city of 
the dead, I saw the memorials of many who bore names famous 
in the history of the commonwealth and the nation, and then 
at the extreme end of the enclosure I found the place where 
President Davis was laid away. On the banks of the James 
overlooking the city he loved so well, and surrounded by those 
who were dear to him in life, rests the great leader of the Con- 
federacy. Thus are the worthy sons of Virginia honored by 
their descendants." Why this change in sentiment of these men? 
Why can they write so beautifully of our dead? Because they 
have learned the truth and are intelligent and honest enough 
to appreciate it. Then let each one of us do what little we 
can to carry on the good work, that our dear Southland may 
be honored, and our dead have justice done them. This is tin- 
sole motive of this paper. 



CHAPTER I. 

Slavery. 

That the late war between the states would have occurred 
if the doctrine of secession had never been heard of there is no 
doubt. That it never would have occurred if there had been 
no African slavery in the country admits of as little doubt. 
Slavery was not the direct cause of the war, but it produced 
conditions which made the two sections antagonistic in interest 
and, shame be it said, men will always fight for interest more 
than for principle. We believe it was the interest of New 
England prior to 1861 to have a high protective tariff, as it is 
now ; it was the interest of the South that we should have no 
tariff. New England was a manufacturing section, having no 
slaves, as the negro did not thrive in that cold climate, and were 
not profitable in agriculture, nor intelligent enough to be em- 
ployed in manufactories. New England therefore sold the slaves 
to the South where they thrive in a warm and sunny clime, and 
were profitable in the cultivation of cotton and tobacco. But 
the South had no manufactories and therefore wished to pur- 
chase her manufactured goods in the cheapest market, and 
were naturally averse to paying tribute to New England m the 
way of a large increase in price of these commodities, under 
the name of tariff. The people of New England and of the 
South came to a great extent from the same stock, but New 
England was engaged in trade and commerce, the South in 
agriculture. The one occupation through all history has made 
men sharp, narrow and selfish, the other has made its votaries 
liberal and generous. In the case of the Southern whites, hav- 
ing leisure, it also made them cultivated and refined— traits 
entirely wanting in the early days in our New England ances- 
tors. The shrewd New Englander, wishing to force the South 
to acquiesce in the legalized robbery under the name of tariff, 
looked about for the most vulnerable point in the Southern 
economic structure, and hit upon slavery. The conversion of 

(5) 



6 SLAVERY. 

New England from slave owners and slave traders to the apos- 
tles of liberty is the most remarkable in history. That of 
Constantine to Christianity must give place to it. 

Who was responsible for the presence of the negro slave 
in America? If we trace the history of slavery, we will find 
that old England and New England brought them here, and 
against many protests from the South. 

But first let us say on the other point that we make in re- 
gard to secession : The right of revolution was never doubted 
by the Southern people, nor today is it doubted by any intelli- 
gent man alive. Perhaps not half the Southern people believed 
in the right of secession, but practically all believed in the 
right of revolution, and exercised it, knowing that they had just 
cause. Can the position of many Southern people, not lawyers 
or students of Constitutional history, be better stated than by 
Robert E. Lee? He says, in a letter to his son from Texas, 
January 23, 1861 : "The South in my opinion has been ag- 
grieved by the acts of the North as you say. I feel the aggres- 
sion, and am willing to take every proper step for redress. But 
I can anticipate no greater calamity to the country than a 
dissolution of the Union. . . . Secession is nothing but revo- 
lution. The framers of our Constitution never expended so 
much labor, wisdom and forbearance in its foundation, and sur- 
rounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended 
to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. Still 
a union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, 
and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of 
brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. If the Union 
is dissolved and the Government disrupted I shall return to my 
native State, and save in its defence I will draw my sword on 
none." (Long's Life of R. E. Lee, p. 88.) Thus, when Lee 
and many other Southern men joined the Confederacy, they 
believed they exercised the inalienable right of freemen, revo- 
lution, and were prepared, as their fathers were before them, 
to take the consequences. 

We repeat, therefore, that the war would have come if 
secession had never been a Constitutional right, because the 
Southern people never could have endured the wrongs imposed 
upon them by the North, and the fanatics of the North wished 
to crush them, and never would have permitted them to go in 
peace. 



SLAVERY. 7 

Slavery was practiced by all the nations of the world from 
the earliest time. It was practiced among the Hebrews and was 
sanctioned by the express legislation of the Most High. "Both 
thy bond men and thy bond maids which thou shalt have, shall 
be of the heathen that are round about you. Of them shall ye 
buy bond men and bond maids. Moreover, of the children of 
the strangers that sojourn among 3'ou, of them shall ye buy, 
and of their families that are with you, which they begat in 
your land, and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take 
them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit 
them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever." 
(Lev. xxi:44, 45, 46.) And so in the New Testament we find: 
"Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according 
to the flesh." (Eph. vi:5; Col. iii.22; Titus ii.9, 10; I Peter 
ii.18.) 

The Greeks and Romans enslaved every one of all nations 
who came within their power, and these were the liberty-loving 
people of the earth. It would require too much space even to 
call the roll of the slave-owning nations ; we therefore come at 
once to our own English people. These, too, we find have been 
slaves and slave-owners from the earliest recorded history down 
to a recent date. 

Edward III gave to a former slave, John Simondrey, a 
general power to go through the royal manors and grant manu- 
mission to all vassals therein for a certain compensation in 
money. This example of the sovereign was followed by many 
other lords in similar need, and to this, among other causes, 
may be attributed the extinction of villanage. In 1574, we find 
a commission issued by Queen Elizabeth, for inquiry into the 
condition of "all her bondmen and bondwomen in the counties 
of Cornwall, etc., such as were, by blood, in a slavish condition, 
and to compound with them for their manumission and freedom." 
The benevolence and negligence of lords, and the unfruitful- 
ness of villan service (especially when confined to the land) 
may be added as principal causes of the gradual extinction of 
villanage. It is true, however, in Britain, as on the continent, 
that the religious houses were the last to grant freedom to 
their villans. (Cobbe on Slavery, 129.) "These villans," says 
Blackstone (Black. Com., Bk. II, p. 93), "belonging principally 
to the lords of the manors, were either villans regardant, that 
is, annexed to the manor or land, or else they were gross, or 



8 SLAVERY. 

at large, that is, annexed to the person of the lord and trans- 
ferable by deed from one owner to another. They could not 
leave this lord without his permission, but if they ran away, or 
were purloined from him, might be claimed and recovered by 
action, like beasts, or other chattels." These slaves were white, 
and our ancestors. While Queen Elizabeth set her white slaves 
free, she did not hesitate to procure black ones, and to engage 
in the African slave trade. 

"No religious zeal prompted the English nation in this 
participation in the African slave trade. In 1553, we are in- 
formed by Hakluyt, twenty-four negro slaves were brought to 
England from the coast of Africa. The virtuous indignation 
of the people seems not to have been aroused, but the slaves were 
quietly sold as in open market. The introduction of negro 
slaves into that country continued without question as to its 
legality until the trial of the celebrated Somerset case in 1771, 
when it was discovered that even as far back as the eleventh 
year of Elizabeth's reign, in the case of the Russian slave, it 
had been solemnly adjudged that the air of England was too 
pure for a slave to breathe in. And yet, strange to say, in 
I Ed. vi, Chap, iii, certain vagabonds and idle servants were by 
Parliament declared to be slaves to their masters ; and still 
stranger, while the Russian slave was enjoying the pure air of 
England, the virtuous Elizabeth was sharing the profits and 
participating in the curses of the African slave trade." 

The London Quarterly of 1855 says : "The present philan- 
thropists of Boston are greatly horrified at the advertisements 
in American newspapers, carefully collected by American aboli- 
tionists. To such we commend the files of old English journals, 
in the British Museum, where they will find negro runaways 
and negro slaves advertised with as much naivete as their vir- 
tuous ancestors could assume. Sir John Hawkins has the memo- 
rable distinction of being the first English captain of a slave 
ship, but Queen Elizabeth regarded the slave trade as an achieve- 
ment worthy of honorable commemoration, for when she made 
Hawkins a knight she gave him for a crest a device of a negro's 
head and bust with arms tightly pinioned. Public opinion on 
the subject was expressed by a Captain Lok, who declared that 
the negroes were a people of beastly living, without God, law, 
religion or commonwealth, so that he deemed himself their bene- 
factor in carrying them off to a Christian land where their 



SLAVERY. 9 

bodies might be decently clothed, their souls made fit for heaven." 
(Fiske, Old Virginia.) How much more, then, should the South- 
ern people be considered the benefactor of the negro, when they 
in so short a time transformed him from a savage to one fit to 
be an American citizen and the equal in all respects before the 
law of a native of Boston ! 

During the reign of Charles II (1662) a company was 
chartered named the Ro}^al African Company, with the exclu- 
sive privilege of the slave trade, which included the king. The 
king and his brother were stockholders, and the Duke of York 
was its head. 

By the treaty of Utrecht, Spain and England became the 
greatest dealers of all time in human flesh. By this treaty 
British subjects were granted the privilege of furnishing negro 
slaves to the Spanish colonies; the treaty was to last thirty 
3 T ears, and at least 140,000 negroes were to be imported. 

It may be a surprise to some to know that a Southern slave 
State led the world in prohibiting the African slave trade. 
Virginia by Act October, 1778 (9 Henning Stat. 471) pro- 
hibited the importation of slaves under a penalty of £1000. 
England followed twenty -nine years later, in 1807. In the 
year 1771 there sailed from England alone 192 ships provided 
for the exportation of 47,146. (Copley's Hist, of Slavery, 114.) 
It is strange that the State of Georgia followed Virginia in 
abolishing the slave trade in 1798. Thus two slave States of 
the South set an example to the world in this humane act. It 
is interesting to compare the dates of the abolition of the slave 
trade and of slavery by the nations of the earth. 
Virginia abolished slave trade 1778, slavery in 1865. 

Georgia " " 

Great Britain " " 

United States 

France " " 

Congress of Vienna " " 

Spain 
Denmark " " 1848. 

Massachusetts never by statute abolished slavery. (Com- 
monwealth v. Aves, Pick. 209.) Nor is there any statute in 
New Hampshire on that subject, and one slave is reported in 
that State emancipated in 1784, but five still existed by census 



1798 


a 


" 1865. 


1807 


a 


" 1834. 


1808 


a 


" 1865. 


1815 






1815 






1829 







10 SLAVERY. 

of 1840, and by the same census seven still lived in Connecticut. 
Slavery was not finally abolished in New York until 1827. 
The census of 1850 gives 236 as still living in Pennsylvania. 

In the Economic and Social History of New England (Vol. 
II, p. 467), we find the following. "But can we believe the 
curious, prying eyes of modern research, as it uncovers an actual 
venture after negroes — a voyage deliberately planned by Peter 
Faneuil, owned one-half by himself and one-quarter by a Cap- 
tain John Cutter. The name of the craft, too — -did Peter slap 
his fat, round belly and chuckle when he named the same Jolly 
Bachelor? This must be merely the sad irony of fate, that the 
craft deliberately destined to be packed with human pains, and 
to echo with human groans, should in its very name bear the 
fantastic image of the luxury-loving chief owner. If these be 
the sources of profit and property, where is the liberty of 
Faneuil Hall; where the charitj' of 'good' Peter's alms? " 

"Connecticut was not free from the 'sin of slavery.' In 
1650, Indians who failed to make satisfaction for injuries were 
ordered to be seized and delivered to the injured party, 'either 
to serve or to be shipped out and exchanged for negroes, as the 
case will justly bear.' Insolvent debtors also were authorized 
to be sold to English purchasers and the proceeds applied to 
their debts. Negro slavery was abolished in Connecticut years 
before the latter provision was expunged from the statute book." 
(Cobb on Slavery, 1 Hild. 372.) 

"Last week arrived at Fisher's Island the brig Nancy, be- 
longing to this port, Capt. Robert W — (a half-pay British 
officer), master, and landed its cargo, consisting of 140 convicts, 
taken out of the British jails. Captain W — , it is said, received 
51 Stirling a head from the government for this job, and we 
hear he is distributing them about the country. Stand to it, 
houses, stores, etc., these gentry are acquainted with the busi- 
ness." (Salem, Mass., Mercury, July 15, 17 — .) 

Rhode Island joined in the general habit of the day, with 
the exception of the town of Providence. The community of 
the heretical Roger Williams alone placed the services of the 
black and the white races on the same footing. [Williams' 
heresy consisted in declaring that Indians had souls — for this 
he was forced to leave Massachusetts.] In the plantations 
generally, slaves abounded to a greater extent than in any other 



SLAVERY. 11 

portion of New England, and in Newport, the second commercial 
town in New England, there was a greater proportion of slaves 
than in Boston. (2 Hild. 419.) 

As early as 1624 slaves were imported into New York. 
The city itself owned shares in a slave ship, advanced money for 
its outfit, and participated in the profits. The slaves were sold 
at public auction to the highest bidder. "That New York is 
not now a slave State like Carolina," says the historian, Ban- 
croft, "is due to climate, and not to the superior humanity of 
its founders/' (2 Bancroft 303.) New Jersey in 1664 of- 
fered a bounty of seventy-five acres of land, by the proprie- 
taries, for the importation of each able-bodied slave. (Cobb, 
p. cxlix.) It is a mooted question whether William Penn him- 
self did or did not die a slave-owner. It is certain that his 
relatives who settled in Virginia were slave-owners. 

In 1712, to a general petition for the emancipation of 
negro slavery in Pennsylvania, the Legislature responded, "It 
is neither just nor convenient to set them at liberty." The 
larger portion of slaves in Pennsylvania were found in Phila- 
delphia, one-fourth of the population of which in 1750 are sup- 
posed to have been of African descent. (2 Hild. 420; Cobb 
cxlix.) The Virginia Gazette, May 24, 1751, contains a letter 
dated Philadelphia, which is very interesting in this connection, 
showing as it does that the practice of selling white convicts as 
slaves in that State was instituted by Penn, and it was kept up 
even as late as 1751. "From Bucks County we hear that a 
convict servant, one John McCanless, imported here last fall 
has broken open and robbed several houses of goods to a con- 
siderable value ; but being apprehended at a Ferry is committed 
to Prison. When we see our Papers filled continually with ac- 
counts of the most audacious Robberies, the most cruel murders, 
and infinite other villanies perpetrated by convicts transported 
from Europe what melancholy, what terrible reflections must it 
occasion ! These are of thy Favors, Briton. Thou art called 
our mother country, but what good mother ever sent Thieves 
and Villains to accompany her children? And what must we 
think of those Merchants who for the sake of a little paltry gain 
will be concerned in importing and disposing of these abominable 
cargoes ? " 

Thus we see all the Northern States owning slaves and 
actively engaged in the slave trade — white as well as black. 



12 SLAVERY. 

How, then, can they reproach the South for owning what they 
sold her? The greater curse, that of stealing and bartering 
for human beings, as well as the horrors of the middle passage, 
was upon the Northern slave-trader, and not the Southern 
planter. It was no great philanthropic act to declare slavery 
illegal in the North, where it was unprofitable, especially when 
a large price was obtained from the Southern planter for the 
slaves, but it required some sacrifice to abolish the slave trade, 
which was a lucrative one to the Northern ship owners. Let us 
see who led in this movement. 

We have seen that Virginia preceded all the nations of the 
earth in prohibiting this trade, and Georgia came next ; but the 
voice of Virginia was heard prior to that date in protesting 
against it. (9 Hen. Stat. 471.) "In 1699 the General Assem- 
bly of Virginia commenced a series of Acts (as many as twenty- 
three in all), by which they sought to arrest or discourage the 
introduction of slaves, the last being in 1772, which was ac- 
companied by an earnest petition to the throne to remove all 
restrictions which inhibited His Majesty's Government assenting 
to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce 
as that of slavery. This petition, like its predecessor, was dis- 
regarded. The Virginia Constitution of 1776, in its preamble, 
complains of it as one of the acts of 'detestable and insupporta- 
ble tyranny' of the King of Great Britian, that he had prompted 
our negroes to rise in arms among us — those very negroes whom 
by an inhuman use of his negation he had refused us permission 
to exclude by law." (1 Tucker's Blackstone, Appx. 51 — note. 
Va. Court.) Might not Virginians with propriety bring the 
same accusation against New England, for they imported the 
negro from Africa, against our wishes. 

The effort was made in 1779 by Jefferson to abolish slavery 
in Virginia, again the first in our history. It was again made 
in 1803 and again in 1831 ; each time the effort was nearly 
successful. Only the difficult}' of disposing of the free negroes 
prevented, for they constituted a large percentage of the popu- 
lation. (Jefferson's Notes on Va., 143; 1 Tuck. Blackstone, 
Pt. II, Appx. 76— id., 81; 4 Jeff. Mem. 388.) 

Let us turn to national legislation on this subject. After 
the recognition of the independence of the States, the Conven- 
tion which framed the Constitution of the United States were 
unanimous in putting a limit upon the introduction of negroes. 



SLAVERY. 13 

Massachusetts, whose merchants were engaged in the slave trade, 
joined with Georgia and South Carolina in demanding a few 
more years ere the final prohibition, and the year 1808 was 
agreed upon. In 1808, when the Act of prohibition took effect, 
the State of Rhode Island alone had fifty-four vessels engaged 
in the slave trade. Luther Martin, of Maryland, in the Con- 
vention moved the prohibition of the trade, and he was most 
earnestly sustained by Mason, Madison and Randolph, of Vir- 
ginia, and was opposed by Georgia and South Carolina, and 
by New England. (3 Madison Papers, 1388-92, 1427.) In 
fact, at that time Virginia was much more earnest in wishing 
to abolish slavery than were the extreme Northern States. The 
Act of 1787, excluding slaves from the Northwest Territory, 
originated with Virginia and passed Congress with but one 
dissenting vote, and that from New York — the entire South 
voting for it. 

But the strangest fact in this story of slavery has not been 
told. The Proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, issued January 1st, 
1863, freeing the slaves, was of course only a piece of buncombe, 
and could legally and constitutionally have no effect. The act 
which set the negroes free was the thirteenth amendment to the 
Constitution. This being granted, let us see what a mess our 
Republican fellow citizens have gotten themselves into. This 
amendment was declared adopted December 18th, 1865, and at 
that time there were thirty-six States members of the Federal 
Union. Article V of the Constitution provides that no amend- 
ment to the Constitution shall become a part thereof until "rati- 
fied by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States." There- 
fore, to ratify an amendment at chat time, the vote of twenty- 
seven States was required, and by the proclamation of the Sec- 
retary of State, December 18th, 1865, twenty-seven States are 
named as having so ratified, but of these only sixteen were 
Northern States, the others were Virginia, West Virginia, 
Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, South Carolina, Alabama, 
North Carolina, Georgia, Missouri and Maryland. Now it must 
be very humiliating to Northern Republicans to think that it 
required the vote of these Southern States to set the negro free ; 
that nine Northern States refused to vote for the measure ; but 
it must be "wormwood and gall" to be told that the votes of 
these Southern States were illegally given, and that therefore 
this amendment was illegally adopted, but Congress by their acts 



14- SLAVERY. 

have so declared. The Acts of Congress known as the Recon- 
struction Acts (Stat, at Large, 13 Vol., p. 428; Vol. 14; 15 
Vol. 73) declare that there exists in the Southern States no legal 
government, and they are not entitled to representation in the 
Congress of the United States, and provide for the formation 
of a new constitution for these States, a provision of which 
shall abolish slavery, disfranchise the whites and admit the negro 
to vote. Eight of the States above named are among these 
States which Congress declares out of the Union. The Acts 
provide for the formation of new and reconstructed States, 
which was done, and are the State governments recognized to- 
day as the legal governments. To add to this dilemma, another 
of the States consenting to the thirteenth amendment was West 
Virginia. Section 3 of Article IV of the Constitution provides, 
"No new States shall be formed or erected within the jurisdic- 
tion of any other State; nor any State be formed by the juris- 
diction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the 
consent of the Legislature of the State concerned." Therefore, 
as the government of Virginia, which Congress declared not to 
exist legally, was the one giving consent to the formation of 
West Virginia, that State had no legal existence, and one more 
consenting State goes, leaving but eighteen consenting States, 
or just one-half, instead of the necessary three-fourths. Will 
the Republican party accept the Southern votes to abolish 
slavery, or the Reconstruction Acts, which tried to abolish the 
South and make the negro master? 

It is very interesting in this connection to consider the 
opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States on the legal 
status of the South during and after the war. The leading case 
on this question is Texas v. White, 7 Wallace. The opinion 
of the Court was delivered by Chief Justice Chase. After stat- 
ing the history of secession, he summarizes the action of the 
State of Texas as follows: "In all respects, so far as the object 
could be accomplished by ordinance of the Convention, by Acts 
of the Legislature, and by votes of its citizens, the relations 
of Texas to the Union were broken up, and new relations to a 
new government were established for them." This was followed 
by a rehash of Judge Story's argument against secession, very 
poorly done, as Judge Story has many times been answered and 
annihilated ("Is Davis a Traitor?" — Bledsoe) ; it is unneces- 
sary to refer to it. The majority of the court held the act of 



SLAVERY. 15 

secession void, and that Texas had not left the Union. This 
opinion was not unanimous, the three ablest judges (Miller, 
Swayne and Grier) dissenting, and their views were stated by 
Justice Grier. He says in part: "These clauses (quoting from 
Marshall) show that the word 'State' is used in the Constitution 
as designating a member of the Union, and excludes from the 
term the signification attached to it by writers on the law of 
nations. Now we have a clear and well defined test by which 
we may arrive at a conclusion with regard to the question of 
facts now to be decided. Is Texas a State, now represented 
by members chosen by the people of that State and received on 
the floor of Congress? Has she two Senators to represent her 
as a State in the Senate of the United States? Has her voice 
been heard in the late election of President? Is she not now 
held and governed as a conquered province by military force? 
The Act of Congress of March 28th, 1867, declares Texas to 
be a 'Rebel State,' and provides for its government until a legal 
and republican State government could be legally established. 

"It constituted Louisiana and Texas as the fifth military 
district, and made it subject, not to the civil authority, but 
to the military authority of the Unite States. 

"It is true that no organized rebellion now exists there, 
and the courts of the United States now exercise jurisdiction 
over the people of that province. But this is no test of the 
State's being in the Union. Dakota is no State, and yet the 
courts of the United States administer justice there as they do 
in Texas. The Indian tribes, who are governed by military 
force, cannot claim to be States of the Union. Wherein does 
the condition of Texas differ from theirs? 

"Now, by assuming or admitting as a fact the present 
status of Texas as a State not in the Union politically, I beg 
leave to protest against any charge of inconsistency as to judi- 
cial opinions heretofore expressed as a member of this Court, 
or silently assented to. I do not consider myself bound to ex- 
press any opinion judicially as to the constitutional right of 
Texas to exercise the rights and privileges of a State of this 
Union, or the power of Congress to govern her as a conquered 
province, to subject her to military domination, and keep her 
in pupilage. I can only submit to the fact as declared by the 
political position of the Government ; and I am not disposed 
to join in any essay to prove Texas to be a State of the Union 



16 SLAVERY. 

when Congress have declared that she is not. It is a question 
of fact, I repeat, and of fact only. Politically, Texas is not a 
State in this Union ; whether rightly or wrongfully out of it or 
not is a question not before the Court." 

To prove that Congress unquestionably intended that the 
Southern States as they formerly existed should be blotted out 
of existence, and new and reconstructed States admitted into 
the Union, it is only necessary to refer to the proceedings of 
that body. On June 25, 1868 (15 Stat, at Large 73) Congress 
passed the Act admitting North Carolina, South Carolina, Lou- 
isiana, Georgia, Alabama and Florida to the Union. The Act 
states that these States had complied with the Act of March 2, 
1867, and declares that the above named States "shall be entitled 
and admitted to representation in Congress as a State of the 
Union when the Legislatures of each State shall have duly rati- 
fied the Amendment to the Constitution of the United States 
. . . known as the fourteenth amendment," etc., etc. 

Thus, if the facts of history can prove anything, we have 
two points established. After the death of nearly a million 
of the best men in the country, and an immense loss of treasure, 
the Southern States were out of the Union and held as con- 
quered provinces, the abolition of negro slavery was enacted 
by the votes of Southern slave States, without which it could 
not have been legally enacted, and all that was accomplished by 
the war was the destruction of the South, which was the true 
object of Republican leaders. 

Negro slavery in the South has been depicted in the most 
harrowing terms by Northern abolitionists ; it is useless to recall 
to the memory these false statements of the ante-bellum condi- 
tions. The slavery of the South was the mildest of serfdom, 
and the conditions admirably fitted to the negro. Never since 
the day the curse of the Lord fell upon the son of Noah has his 
seed been in a condition better suited to his temperament, or 
more mild and benevolent. While the whites of the South have 
been much blessed by the extinction of slavery, the negro has 
been cursed by it, and today they are reaping the fruits of the 
acts of their pretended friends at the North, which will result 
in the extermination of the race. 

A few extracts from the writings of disinterested persons 
will prove the truth of this statement. From "History and 
Present State of Virginia," Edition of 1722 : 



SLAVERY. 17 

"Because I have heard how strangely cruel and savage 
the service of this country is represented in some parts of 
England, I can't forbear affirming that the work of these 
servants and slaves is no other than what every common free- 
man does. Neither is any servant required to do more in a day 
than his overseer. And I can assure you with great truth that 
generally their slaves are not worked near so hard nor so many 
hours in a day as the husbandman and day laborers in England. 
An overseer is a man that, having served his time, has acquired 
the skill and character of an experienced planter, and is there- 
fore intrusted with the direction of the servants and slaves." 

And again in the same book: "The inhabitants are very 
courteous to travellers, who need no other recommendation but 
the being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do but 
to inquire upon the road where any gentleman or good house- 
keeper lives, and there he may depend upon being received with 
hospitality. This good nature is so general among these peo- 
ple that the gentry, when they go abroad, order their principal 
servant to entertain all visitors with everything the plantation 
affords. And the poor planters, who have but one bed, will very 
often set up, or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make 
room for a weary traveller to repose himself after his journey." 

Extract below is from a letter written in 1822 by General 
Quitman, a native of New York, to his father, and describes 
Southern life just a century later than the above, but the life 
is the same. 

"I am now writing," he says, "from one of these old South- 
ern mansions, and I can give you no better notion of life at the 
South than by describing the routine of a day. The owner 
is the widow of a Virginia gentleman of distinction — a brave 
officer who died in the public service during the last war with 
Great Britain. 

"This excellent lady is not rich — merely independent — but 
b}' thrifty housewifery, and good dairy and garden, she con- 
trives to dispense the most liberal hospitality. Her slaves ap- 
pear to be, in a manner, free, yet are obedient and polite, aiid 
the farm is well worked. With all her gayety of disposition and 
fondness for the young she is truly pious, and in her own 
apartments, every night, she has family prayers with her slaves, 
one or more of them being often called on to sing and pray. 
They are married by a clergyman of their own color, and a 



18 SLAVERY. 

sumptuous supper is always prepared. On public holidays they 
have dinners equal to an Ohio barbecue, and Christmas, for a 
week or ten days, is a protracted festival for the blacks. They 
are a happy, careless, unreflecting, good-natured race, who, left 
to themselves, would degenerate into drones or brutes ; but, sub- 
jected to wholesale restraint and stimulus, become the best and 
most contented of laborers. They are strongly attached to 'old 
massa' and 'old missus,' but their devotion to 'young massa' 
and 'young missus' amounts to enthusiasm. 

"They have great family pride, and are the most arrant 
coxcombs and aristocrats in the world. At a wedding I witnessed 
here last Saturday evening, where some one hundred and fifty 
negroes were assembled — many being invited guests — I heard 
a number of them addressed as governors, generals, judges, and 
doctors (the titles of their masters). The 'colored ladies' are 
invariably Miss Joneses, or some such title. They are exceed- 
ingly pompous and ceremonious, gloved and highly perfumed. 
The 'gentlemen' sport canes, ruffles and jewelry; wear boots 
and spurs ; affect crape on their hats, and carry huge segars. 
The belles wear gaudy colors, 'tote' their fans with the air of 
Spanish senoritas, and never stir out, though black as the ace 
of spades, without their parasols. 

"In short, these 'niggers,' as you call them, are the happiest 
people I have ever seen, and some of them are in form, features 
and movements real sultanas. So far from being fed on salted 
cotton-seed, as we used to believe in Ohio, they are oily, sleek, 
bountifully fed, well clothed, well taken care of, and one hears 
them at all times whistling and singing cheerily at their work. . . 

"Compared with the ague-smitten and suffering settlers 
that you and I have seen in Ohio, or the sickly and starved 
operators we read of in factories and in mines, these Southern 
slaves are indeed to be envied. They are treated with great 
humanity and kindness." (Lunt, p. 4>66.) 

Such was the negro slavery which the Northern philan- 
thropists sacrificed fourteen billion of dollars and one million 
of lives to destroy — about one life for every three and one-half 
negroes in the South. 

It is pertinent to ask at this point have the negroes been 
benefited by this change from slavery to freedom. Dr. P. B. 
Barringer, of the University of Virginia, in an address delivered 
before the race conference at Montgomery, Ala., 1900, says: 



SLAVERY. 19 

"'Beyond these facts here set forth I may state that as a 
Southerner and a physician I am familiar with the physicians 
of the South, and it is the almost universal opinion of these 
men, who should and do know more of the negro than all other 
classes combined, that the negro as a race is steadily degener- 
ating, both morally and physically. The last census showed a 
decrease in gain as compared with the preceding, and when the 
tide once turns the end will be in sight. 

"In conclusion, all things point to the fact that the negro 
as a race is reverting to barbarism with the inordinate crimi- 
nality and degradation of that state. It seems, moreover, that 
he is doomed at no distant day to racial extermination. If re- 
production ceases eight millions will die out as rapidly as eight 
hundred, as the outlook for this people is black indeed. 

"What brought about this condition ? In my opinion eman- 
cipation — the negro feels that this was a dies irae; he has no 
enthusiasm for "Emancipation Day" — sounded the death knell 
of the negro, but it did not of necessity decree his speedy end. 
Something else was needed, and fate supplied the need — the 
negro was duly crowned with the ballot and given control of the 
South. That settled it. Enmity was deliberately put between 
the son of the master, the only man who ever really loved the 
slave, and the son of the slave. The only sincerely friendly 
hand the negro ever knew was perforce turned against him, 
and without it he is falling. What will save him? Will educa- 
tion? The South has given him the best she had, and we see 
the result. Will industrial education prove a panacea? The 
report of the Bureau of Education for 1889-90 shows that of 
1,243 graduates of seventeen colored industrial schools, three 
only pursued the trade for which educated, twelve were farming, 
six hundred and ninety-three teaching academic schools, and the 
rest had joined the non-producing professions and pursuits. 
The wealth of the Indies could not give this entire race technical 
training any more than it could satiate the appetite of those 
thriving on the brokerage of philanthropy. Industrial training 
should be reserved for a more industrious people. In my opinion 
nothing is more certain than that the negro will go as the Tas- 
manian and the Carib have gone ; but till then he is our problem. 
I say ours, because the New South — child of the Old, young, 
strong and undaunted — proposes to deal with this matter as she 
sees best. The future of the negro surely prompts compassion, 



20 SLAVERY. 

charity and mercy. These he will get in full measure; but the 
white man of the South should not and will not re-enslave him- 
self for the benefit of the black. Slavery is forever gone, and 
with it went the bonds which for two centuries fettered the mas- 
ter, and also every iota of his responsibility for his grand but 
ghastly tragedy — The Sacrifice of a Race." 

The prediction of Dr. Barringer is not founded on the facts 
alone which he sees around him ; it is but the history of the race 
in other lands — Africa, the West Indies, and South America. 
(Cobb on Slavery.) In the South the Italians are pouring in 
from the old world and pressing the negro out of the cotton 
and rice fields. In the border States laborers from the Northern 
States and Europe are driving them from the corn and tobacco 
fields. From these old homes they are retiring to the cities, and 
to the woods. In the first they are acquiring all the vices of 
the whites ; in the latter they are sinking into the barbarism of 
their ancestors. This crime is at the door of the men who 
wore the blue, and not those who wore the gray. 



CHAPTER II. 

Secession. 

In placing before our people the truth of secession, the 
war, and reconstruction, the words of men best informed on 
these subjects will be used, for they carry weight with them. 

Many well-informed Americans today believe the doctrine 
of secession originated in the South, and was a political heresy 
of which John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis were the origi- 
nators. They will be surprised to know that this is far from the 
truth; that Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Burr, and many 
others were its disciples ; that the right of a State to secede from 
the Union — "secession" — was a part and parcel of the theories 
of our government from the first, and was nursed and perpetu- 
ated, not in the South, but in New England, where more than 
once it was practically put in force : that it was taught as late 
as 1861 at West Point as the Constitutional Law of the land. 
This last statement is surprising but true. Until 1861 "Rawls 
on the Constitution" was used as a text-book at West Point. 
At page 294 he says : "It depends on the State itself to retain 
or abolish the principles of representation, because it depends 
on itself whether or not it will continue a member of the Union. 
To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on 
which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the 
people have in all cases a right to determine how they will be 
governed." 

It is true that the Supreme Court held in White vs. Texas, 
7 Wallace, that this right never existed, but as far as the acts 
of 1861 are concerned this was ex post facto, and was made for 
political purposes by the men whomade the war, to justify their 
acts, and in this case a large mSjprity of the Court held that 
Congress by its acts had decided the State of Texas to be out 
of the Union — thus endorsing secession. 

Massachusetts in her act adopting the Constitution calls 
that instrument a compact, and Virginia, in her act of ratifi- 

(21) 



22 SECESSION. 

cation, expressly reserved the right of the State to secede at 
will, and she was received into the Union under this agreement 
— compact, as Massachusetts called it. Will any candid, rea- 
sonable man contend that this part of the compact was not as 
binding upon the parties to it as any other clause? 

A recent Northern writer x has said, "It is partisan 
reading of American history not to see that from the acceptance 
of the Constitution in 1790 there has been a tendency to assert 
the rights of States, and the right of States to sever relation 
to the Union. New England in 1803 and 1804 tried to get five 
States to secede — New York, New Jersey and the New England 
States. In 1812-14 New England practically withdrew from 
co-operation with the Union." 

Another author 2 says, "In the Massachusetts State Con- 
vention of 1851 it was 'Resolved, That the one issue before 
the country is dissolution of the Union, in comparison with which 
all other issues are as dust in the balance, therefore we have 
given ourselves to the work of annulling this convention with 
death." 

In 1814 a committee of the New York Legislature reported: 

"It is the opinion of this Committee that these New Eng- 
land Federalists mean to make peace with the enemy, and to 
forcibly separate New England from the Union." 

A convention was held at Hartford, Conn., between Dec. 
15, 1814, and Jan. 5, 1815, consisting of twelve delegates from 
Massachusetts, seven from Connecticut, three from Rhode Is- 
land, two from New Hampshire, and one from Vermont. The 
president was George Cabot, of Massachusetts, and the secre- 
tary Theodore Dwight, of Connecticut. The convention was 
in session three weeks, and then issued a report to the Legis- 
latures of the States represented. This report says in part : 

"But in case of deliberate, dangerous and palpable infrac- 
tion of the Constitution affecting the sovereignty of a State, 
and liberties of the people, it is not only the right but the duty 
of such a State to interpose its authority for their protection, 
in the manner best calculated to secure that end," and it further 
declares, "Therefore resolved that it be and is hereby recom- 
mended to the Legislatures of the several States represented 

1 Powell N. & S., pp. 69-70, 90. 
■ Carpenter's Logic of History. 



SECESSION. 23 

in this Convention to adopt all such measures as may be neces- 
sary effectually to protect the citizens of said States from the 
operation and effects of all acts which have been passed by the 
Congress of the United States. ,, 

Nor did New England stop at resolutions, but gave aid 
and comfort to the enemy. Powell, himself a New Englander, 
says (Nullification and Secession, p. 216) : 

"No son of New England can remember without pain and 
shame the records of that section (1812-14). 'In fact,' writes 
Provost of Bathurst, 'two-thirds of the Army of Canada are 
at this moment eating beef provided by American contractors.' 
Says McMasters, "The road to St. Regis was covered with 
droves of cattle, and the rivers with rafts destined for the enemy. 
On the Vermont side of the lake the highways were too narrow 
and too few to accommodate the herds of cattle that were pour- 
ing into Canada. Were it not for these supplies, writes General 
Izard to the Secretary of War, the British forces would soon 
be suffering famine. England, in return, exempted Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire from Blockade." 
Who were the rebels in 1812? But for the defeat of the British 
by General Jackson at New Orleans, which aroused public en- 
thusiasm, New England would have seceded from the Union, and 
there would have been no war of 1861. 

(See Dwight's History of the Hartford Convention. In- 
gersoll, History of Second War with Great Britain. Adams, 
Documents relating to New England Federalists. Goodrich, 
Recollections. Benton's Debates. Powell, Nullification and Se- 
cession.) 

Let us see what men of national prominence all through 
our history have said of States rights and secession. Chief 
Justice Jay, a member of the Convention and an author of the 
Federalist, in Chisholm v. Georgia, 7 Doll. 419, calls the Con- 
stitution a compact. 

"Our Constitution and all the State Constitutions have been 
voluntary compacts, derived from the free consent of the parties 
to them." — John Quincy Adams. 

Mr. Madison, "father of the Constitution," says, "Virginia 
views the power of the Federal Government as resulting from 
compacts to which the States are parties." ("Is Davis a Trai- 
tor? " p. 75. "Virginia Resolutions.") 



24 SECESSION. 

To the same effect Edmund Pendleton (see Elliot's De- 
bates) ; Thomas Jefferson (see Correspondence, Vol. IV, p. 
415) ; Gouverneur Morris (see "Is Davis a Traitor?" 75) ; 
Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. IX), who calls it "An 
Association of States, or a Confederacy." 

Powell 1 , after showing Hamilton's efforts to form a 
Northern Confederacy in 1803, says: "No one can look back 
to 1803 and gather up the threads of dishonor, and trace the 
effects of selfishness to destroy the young nation, while yet in the 
flush of youth, without deep chagrin and anger. There is no 
apology for the leaders. There was in their plotting no great 
moral purpose ; not even a commercial excuse. Although it was 
free States against slave States, yet there was no anti-slavery 
sentiment involved. When the trial hour came, two who had 
been cabinet officers, and two governors, with a chief justice 
and half a dozen Congressmen, were plotters to destroy what 
they were under oath to sustain. The men most trusted were 
found least ready to sacrifice their own power for the good of 
the whole. . . . They deliberately undertook to pull down what 
Washington and Jefferson builded, that they might rule in a 
corner of the ruins." Again (p. 139) : "But not one of them 
argued that neither New England nor New York nor any other 
section had a right to leave the Union. Washington had worked 
for 'an indissoluble union,' but his colleagues clearly did not 
suppose the Union indissoluble. Cabot while unprepared for 
precipitate action, wished not to be misunderstood. 'A separa- 
tion now is impracticable because we do not feel the necessity 
or utility of it. Separation will be unavoidable when our loyalty 
to the Union is generally perceived to be the instrument of de- 
basement and impoverishment.' This was the average height 
of the logic used — secession rather than poverty. We look in 
vain for any high-keyed patriotism. Not a flash anywhere of 
loyalty to federalism. They will quit the Union when they can 
when it costs them too much. The training in New England 
had created a vast self-sufficiency of the cultured 'set.' They 
questioned sincerely the ability of the people to get on without 
them." 

We come next to Webster in 1833. After reading Bled- 
soe's "Is Davis a Traitor?" one can hardly help believing that 
his anti-compact propositions were not original with him, but 

1 Nullification and Secession, pp. 137- 9- 



SECESSION. 25 

were borrowed from his friend, Judge Story, to enable him to 
maintain his reputation in his debate with Hayne. The more we 
know of Webster the more we admire the intellect and despise the 
man. But Webster forgot Story's teachings years later, and 
when the heat of discussion was gone, and his great mind threw 
aside casuistry and spoke the truth as he saw it. In his speech 
delivered at Capon Springs, Virginia, in 1851, he says: "I 
do not hesitate to say and repeat that if the Northern States 
refuse wilfully or deliberately to carry into effect that part of 
the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, 
the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact. A 
bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides." We want no 
stronger statement from him. 

Coming to the period of the war, we find the opinions of 
prominent Northern men still more surprising, for they pro- 
claimed the right of secession one day and the next proclaimed 
the Southerners rebels and traitors for exercising it. We can 
only give a few examples for want of space : 

"Tear down that flaunting lie ; 
Half mast that starry flag ; 
Insult no sunny sky 

With hate's polluted rag." 

— New York Tribune. 

"How dare any one pray for the preservation of that sin 
and shame the Union. . . . Unity of States is a crime."- — 
Boston Commonwealth. 

"The Republican party is moulding public sentiment in 
the right direction for the dissolution of the Union." — Wm. 
Lloyd Garrison. 

"Virginia is no State ! Mr. Wise is not a Governor ! The 
Union is not a nation! All these governments are organized 
piracies."— Wendell Phillips, 1859. 

At another time he said, "We are disunionists ; we want to 
get rid of this Union." 

At a meeting at Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1854, it was 
"Resolved, That we seek the dissolution of this Union, and that 
we hereby declare ourselves the friends of a new Confederacy of 
States, and for a dissolution of the Union." 



26 SECESSION. 

"If the Church is against disunion, I pronounce for the 
church of the devil ! Up with the flag of disunion ! "—Garrison. 

"There never was an hour when this blasphemous and in- 
famous union should have been made ; now the hour must be 
prayed for when it will be dashed to pieces." — Rev. Andrew 
Forbes. 

"The logic of bayonets and rifles and pikes will be hence- 
forth used against the South." — Governor Andrews, of Massa- 
chusetts, 1859. 

"Resolved, That it is the duty of the North, in case we fail 
in electing a President and Congress that will restore freedom 
to Kansas, to revolutionize the government." — Republican Con- 
vention, Green County, Wisconsin, 1856. 

These quotations might be extended indefinitely. 

"The fact can no longer be disguised that many Republican 
Senators desire war and disunion under pretense of saving the 
Union. For partisan reasons they are desirous to destroy the 
Union." 1 (Stephen A. Douglas in the United States Senate, 
December 25th, I860.) 

Why did the South secede? is the question which logically 
next arises, and it can be answered in the words of Abraham 
Lincoln : "Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the 
power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing 
government, and form a new one that suits them better. This 
is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope 
and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined 
to cases in which the whole people of one existing government 
may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, 
may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the terri- 
tory as they inhabit." 2 (In Congress, January 12, 184-8.) 

The South exercised this right by an almost unanimous 
vote of her people. 

The causes they allege for their acts have been summarized 
by Dr. Bledsoe as follows ("Is Davis a Traitor?" p. 266) : 

"The grounds or causes of secession are, it seems to me, 
amply sufficient to justify the South in the exercise of a con- 
stitutional right for which she was amenable to no tribunal on 
earth except the moral sentiment of mankind. 

» " Is Davis a Traitor? " So. Rev. xxxvii, i; (Id. p. 95. Jan. 1, 1872.) 
2 Morse, Life of Lincoln, Vol. I, p. 7 6 - 
Violation of Contract, see Webster's Works, Vol. II, p. 574- 



SECESSION. 27 

"1st. The destruction of the balance of power which was 
originally established between the North and the South. 

"2nd. The sectional legislation by which the original pov- 
erty of the North was exchanged for the wealth of the South. 
"3rd. The formation of a faction, or party, of the North 
pledged against the South. 

"4th. The utter subversion and contemptuous disregard 
of all the checks of the Constitution, instituted and designed 
by its authors for the protection of the minority against the 
majority. 

"5th. The unjust treatment of the slavery question, by 
which the compacts of the Constitution made by the North in 
favor of the South, were gravely violated by her ; while at the 
same time she insisted on the observance of all the compacts 
made by the South in her own favor. 

"6th. The sophistry and hypocrisy, by which the injustice 
to the South was attempted to be justified. 

"7th. The horrible abuse and slander heaped on the South 
by the writers of the North. 

"8th. The contemptuous denial of the right of secession 
and the threats of extermination in case the South attempted 
to exercise that right." 

The South appealed to the Supreme Court, and in the 
words of Woodrow Wilson (Disunion and Reunion, p. 198), 
"The opinion of the court sustained the whole Southern claim." 
This should have settled the question, but the Northern leaders 
appealed to "a higher law" — the passion and prejudice of the 
people. 

Lunt, 1 in his work "Origin of the Late War," p. 363, says : 
"It is impossible to regard the proceedings of the Chicago 
Convention in any other light, than as equivalent to a procla- 
mation of absolutely hostile purpose against the Southern sec- 
tion of the country. They were not technically a declaration of 
war, to be conducted by arms, simply because they proposed 
only to use the pacific force of superior numbers, in order to 
deprive the minority of its rights under the Constitution. While, 
in one part of their 'platform,' the Republicans made a specious 
profession of regard for the Constitution, in another part they 
announced a dissolution of the 'political bonds' by which the 

1 Lunt was a Boston man, and for many years clerk of the Legislature. 



28 SECESSION. 

sections were held together, and even refused to be called by a 
national name. It was an attitude which ought to have given 
instant alarm to every sincere friend of the Union ! " 

If the South had desired to issue a Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, could it have introduced the same with a preamble 
better befitting the conditions than the following? "When in 
the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people 
to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with 
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the 
separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of 
nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinion of 
mankind requires that they should declare the cause which im- 
pelled them to the separation." But this was not penned by 
a Southern hand ; it is part of the Chicago platform upon which 
Abraham Lincoln was nominated. 

The South did separate with many words of regret. And 
can we do better than give here the farewell words of our 
persecuted and beloved leader, but with all a grand, great man, 
when he bade farewell to the Senate in 1861 ? The words were 
as grand as the man, and recite far better than others could 
what every Southern man thought and felt. Mr. Davis said: 

"I hope none who hear me will confound this expression 
of mine with the advocacy of the right of a State to remain in 
the Union, and to disregard its constitutional obligations by 
the nullification of the law. Such is not my theory. Nullifi- 
cation and secession, so often confounded, are, indeed, antagon- 
istic principles. Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to 
apply within the Union, and against the agent of the States. 
It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his con- 
stitutional obligations and a State, assuming to judge for itself, 
denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the 
other States of the Union for a decision ; but when the States 
themselves, and when the people of the States, have so acted as 
to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, 
then, for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its 
practical application. 

"A great man, who now reposes with his fathers, and who 
has often been arraigned for a want of fealty to the Union, 
advocated the doctrine of nullification because it preserved the 
Union. It was because of his deep-seated attachment to the 
Union — his determination to find some remedy for existing ills 



SECESSION. 29 

short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to 
the other States — that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of 
nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful — to be within 
the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only 
to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the 
States for their judgment. 

"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is 
to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. 
There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may 
come again when a better comprehension of the theory of our 
Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the 
States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a 
sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made 
to any agent whomsoever. 

"It is by this confounding of nullification and 
secession that the name of a great man, whose ashes now mingle 
with his mother earth, has been evoked to justify coercion 
against a seceded State. That phrase, 'to execute the laws,' was 
an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a 
State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union. 
That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to 
be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the 
United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. 
It is a perversion of terms- — at least it is a great misapprehen- 
sion of the case — which cites that expression for application 
to a State which has withdrawn from the Union. You may 
make war on a foreign State. If it be the purpose of gentlemen 
they may make war against a State which has withdrawn from 
the Union ; but there are no laws of the United States to be 
executed within the limits of a seceded State. A State, finding 
herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is 
— in which her safety requires that she shall provide for the 
maintenance of her rights out of the Union — surrenders all 
benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of 
the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all 
the ties of affection (and they are close and endearing) which 
have bound her to the Union, and thus divesting herself of every 
benefit — taking upon herself every burden — she claims to be 
exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United 
States within her limits. 



30 SECESSION. 

"I well remember an occasion when Massachusetts was ar- 
raigned before the bar of the Senate, and when the doctrine 
of coercion was rife, and to be applied against her, because of 
the rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston. My opinion then was 
the same that it is now. Not in a spirit of egotism, but to show 
that I am not influenced in my opinion because the case is my 
own, I refer to that time and that occasion, as containing the 
opinion which I then entertained, and on which my present con- 
duct is based. I then said that if Massachusetts, following her 
through a stated line of conduct, chose to take the last step 
which separates her from the Union, it is her right to go, and 
I will neither vote one dollar nor one man to coerce her back, 
but will say her, God speed in memory of the kind associa- 
tions which once existed between her and the other States. 

"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity — it has 
been a belief that we are to be deprived, in the Union, of the 
rights which our fathers bequeathed us — which has brought 
Mississippi into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed 
the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this 
made the basis of attack upon her social institutions ; and the 
sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to main- 
tain the position of the equality of the races. The Declaration 
of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and 
purposes for which it was made. The communities were declar- 
ing their independence ; the people of those communities were 
asserting that no man was born (to use the words of Mr. Jeffer- 
son) booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; 
that men were created equal — meaning the men of a political 
community ; that there was no divine right to rule ; that no man 
inherited the right to govern ; that there were no classes by which 
power and place descended to families, but that all stations were 
equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. 
These were the great principles they announced ; these were the 
purposes for which they made their declaration ; these were 
the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have 
no reference to the slave ; else how happened it that, among the 
items of arraignment against George III, was that he endeav- 
ored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late 
to do — to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the 
Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, 
how was the prince to be arraigned for raising up insurrection 



SECESSION. 31 

among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the 
high crimes winch caused the colonies to sever their connection 
with the mother country? When our constitution was formed, 
the same idea was rendered more palpable; for there we find 
provision made for that very class of persons as property. 
They were not put upon the footing of equality with white men 
— not even upon that of paupers and convicts — but so far as 
representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a 
lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion 
of three-fifths. 

"Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us 
together; we recur to the principles upon which our govern- 
ment was founded ; and when you deny them, and when you deny 
to us the right to withdraw from a government which, thus 
perverted, threatens to be destructive to our rights, we but tread 
in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence 
and take the hazard. This is done not in hostility to others — 
not to injure any section of the country ; not even for our own 
pecuniary benefit — but from the high and solemn motive of 
defending and protecting the rights xve inherited, and which it 
is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children. 

"I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the general feeling 
of my constituents towards you. I am sure I feel no hostility 
towards you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not 
one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been 
between us, to whom I cannot now say in the presence of my 
God, I wish you well; and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the 
people I represent towards those you represent. I, therefore, 
feel that I but express their desire when I sa\< I hope, and they 
hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we must part. 
They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they have 
been in the past, if you so will. The reverse may bring disaster 
on every portion of the country ; and if you will have it thus, 
we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered us from the 
power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; 
and thus, putting our trust in God, and in our firm hearts and 
strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may." 

It is not remarkable that the only effort to avert the war, 
made by a State, should have come from Virginia. 

Virginia was not satisfied to let the handiwork of her great 
sons — the Union — be destroved without one effort to save it, 



32 SECESSION. 

and with it give peace and happiness. The General Assembly 
on the 19th of January, 1861, passed resolutions inviting the 
several States to appoint commissioners to meet in Washington 
on the 4th of February ensuing, "to consider, and if practicable, 
agree upon some suitable adjustment, in the spirit in which the 
Constitution was originally formed and consistently with its 
principles." 

Lunt says: "The proposition of Virginia was like a fire- 
brand suddenly presented to the portals of the Republican mag- 
azine, and the whole energies of the radicals were at once en- 
listed to make it of no effect." The slave-holding States of 
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and 
Missouri cheerfully responded. Of the eighteen free States, 
five did not send delegates, to wit : Wisconsin, Minnesota, Mich- 
igan, California and Oregon. Let us see the spirit in which the 
others came. 

Again I go to Boston for my authority. Lunt says 
(p. 18), speaking of Massachusetts: "The names of those 
whom the Governor had fixed upon were announced on the fol- 
lowing morning and the public were astounded to observe that 
seven more thoroughly uncompromising gentlemen could not 
have been selected in the State. In fact, they were evidently 
to be sent to Washington not to confer but to resist ; and their 
united influence, exerted in that direction, in combination with 
that of the other radical members, throughout the course of the 
proceedings, proved extremely unfavorable to the effect of any 
measures of adjustment which might be adopted, and rendered 
what was actually accomplished of no avail. 

"Indeed, the Northern Legislatures in general, having come 
under the control of the sectionalists, were extremely reluctant 
to accede to the invitations of Virginia ; and although their de- 
sire for a friendly conference, in their resolutions for the ap- 
pointment of commissioners took care to let it be known that 
they were not prepared to accept the basis of adjustment pro- 
posed. Several of them, in merely formal compliance, simply 
requested their Senators and Representatives in Congress to act, 
that is, Republican politicians already, both privately and offi- 
cially implicated in the doings of the party, instead of men from 
whom some impartial consideration of the subject might be 
expected as possible. But notwithstanding all this effort at 
'hedging,' the radicals were in a state of extreme trepidation. 



SECESSION. 33 

The convention contained many gentlemen of great public repu- 
tation, and who had held eminent offices in the nation and at 
home, both from the border slave States and from several of the 
free States. There seemed reason to apprehend that their de- 
liberations might produce a strong public impression, and prove 
unfavorable to the interest and objects of the party. It was in 
this state that the following despatch was sent to the Governor 
of Wisconsin by a Red and Black Republican, who afterwards 
became somewhat notorious in a military capacity" (as reward 
for his services in this respect) : 

February 1, 1861. 
To Governor Randall: 

Appoint commissioners to Washington Conference — my- 
self one — to strengthen our side. 

Carl, Schuez. 

And the Senator from Michigan wrote his Governor as 
follows : 

Washington, February 11, 1861. 
My dear Governor: 

Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed to you on 
Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to 
send delegates to the Peace Compromise Congress. They admit 
that we were right and they were wrong : that no Republican 
State should have sent delegates ; but they are here, and can't 
get away. Ohio, Indiana, and Rhode Island are caving in, and 
there is some danger of Illinois ; and now we beg you for God's 
sake to come to their rescue, and save the Republican party from 
rupture. I hope you will send stiff -backed men or none. The 
whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice, 
and will end in smoke. Still I hope, as a matter of courtesy 
to some of our erring brethren, that you will send the delegates. 

Truly your friend, 

Z. Chandler. 

His Excellency Austin Blair. 

P. S. — Some manufacturing States think a fight would be 
awful. Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my 
estimation, be worth a curse. 

"If this truly eloquent and statesmanlike epistle (!!) does 
not express the views of the Republican managers at the time, 
precisely, it does at least indicate with sufficient clearness their 
relations towards the Peace Conference and the determined pur- 



34 SECESSION. 

pose of the radicals to have 'a fight,' and it furthermore fore- 
shadows the actual direction given to future events. There were 
enough of the 'stiff-backed' in the Peace Conference to deprive 
its deliberations and their results of all moral effect. They 
thought much more of saving the Republican party from rup- 
ture, than of taking pains to prevent the threatened dissolution 
of the Union — an event which only too many of them actually 
desired, and which had now come so near- — because in the face of 
a calamity so dreadful, 'conservative' Republicans and desperate 
radicals continued to hold together and to act in concert with 
each other." "Origin Late War," p. 418-20. 

Stephen A. Douglas, in the Senate, referring to a proposi- 
tion introduced by himself, said: 

"I believe this to be a fair basis of amicable adjustment. 
If you of the Republican side are not willing to accept this, 
nor the proposition of the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. Critten- 
den, pray tell us, what are you willing to do? I address the 
inquiry to the Republicans alone, for the reason that, in the 
Committee of Thirteen, a few days ago, every member from the 
South, including those from the cotton States (Davis and 
Toombs), expressed their readiness to accept the proposition 
of my venerable friend from Kentucky, as a final settlement of 
the controversy, if tendered and sustained by the Republican 
members. Hence the sole responsibility of our disagreement, 
and the only difficulty in the way of an amicable adjustment, 
is with the Republican party." (Congressional Globe, p. 41 — 
appendix.) 

A month later Douglas writes to a Tennessee newspaper: 
"They (the Republican leaders) are trying to plunge the coun- 
try into civil war, as the surest means of destroying the Union, 
upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting public 
property. If they can defeat any adjustment or compromise, 
by which the point at issue may be satisfactorily settled, and 
keep up the irritation so as to induce the border States to follow 
the cotton States, they will feel certain of the accomplishment 
of their ultimate designs. Nothing will gratify them so much, 
or contribute so effectually to their success as the secession of 
the border States. Every State that withdraws from the Union 
increases the relative power of the Northern abolitionists to de- 
feat a satisfactory adjustment." 



SECESSION. 35 

These extracts could be indefinitely extended, but sufficient 
have been given to indicate that it was the Northern Republican 
leaders who intentionally forced the South to secede ; that Sum- 
ner, Chandler, Seward and Stevens were the true conspirators 
and traitors against the Union, and not Davis and the other 
Southern leaders. With the South the war was one of self- 
defence — an attempt to drive back as ruthless and unjustifiable 
invasion as the world's history records. 

The wonder of it is so many good, true and brave men 
were willing to be led by such leaders as at that time admin- 
istered the Government. It is only another instance of the 
extent of the insanity to which political excitement will drive 
even the best of men. As the writer stood upon the heights 
overlooking the Antietam a few days ago, and realized the 
desperate valor which impelled McClellan's troops to again and 
again advance to almost sure death, or wounds, he could not 
help wondering what motives impelled their action. If the men 
resembled the generals, but few of them sympathized with their 
Government in its efforts to destroy their brethren of the South. 
Why, then, did they risk their lives in such a cause, and at the 
command of such a President? 

If the reader is not satisfied with the correctness of this 
conclusion, let him consult the references given, or what is more 
conclusive, the original records. 

"No power," says Alexander H. Stephens, "is given the 
Federal Government, or to any of its branches, to coerce the 
Sovereign States of this Union. Yet Mr. Lincoln exercised this 
power, knowing it to be unconstitutional. Every one of the 
half dozen proclamations which he issued, inaugurating the 
war, was clearly an unconstitutional act. That he was prompt- 
ed to issue them by mischievous counsellors does not justify the 
Executive in violating his oath to protect, maintain and defend 
the Constitution. Pie called out troops, placed the Southern 
States under blockade and commenced the war without a tittle 
of right or authority to do so. 

"Had the Southern States declared war against the Fed- 
eral body ? No ! They had only seceded from it, which as dis- 
tinct sovereigns they had a perfect right to do, when they found 
themselves aggrieved by its action. As Mr. Lincoln could not 
call this proceeding treason and hang the States that resorted 
to it as their remedy against an infringement of their consti- 



36 SECESSION. 

tutional rights, he called it an insurrection — 'a formidable in- 
surrection in certain States of the Union which had arrayed 
itself in armed hostility to the Government of the United States 
constitutionally administered.' This statement was utterly false 
in every particular. There was no insurrection at that time in 
certain States of the Union — none whatever. If the people 
had arms in their hands, it was not to assail a government con- 
stitutionally administered, but to maintain their rights and 
liberties against the insidious or overt acts of tyrants and 
usurpers. 

"Under our system there is no rightful power in the gen- 
eral Government to coerce a State, in case any one of them 
should throw herself upon her reserved rights and resume the 
full exercise of her sovereign powers. Force may perpetuate 
a union. That depends upon the contingencies of war. But 
such a union would not be a union of the Constitution. It would 
be nothing but a consolidated despotism." And such was the 
United States for many years after 1861. 

These views had many times been expressed by Abraham 
Lincoln, and almost every prominent American from Washing- 
ton down. Why, then, the coercion of the South? Was it not 
part of a conspiracy of the Republican leaders to force seces- 
sion on the part of the South, bring on a conflict, destroy 
constitutional rights and free government, and upon its ruins 
build a despotism run only in the interest of high tariff, graft 
and fraud? Such will be the verdict of history. 

Miss Tarbell, in her "Life of Lincoln," p. 144, gives an 
interview of Medill, of the Chicago Tribune, in 1864, given her 
by Mr. Medill, in which Mr. Lincoln said: 1f'Gentlemen,> Jaer- 
jsxid. with a voice full of bitterness,y^after Boston, Chicago 
has been the chief instrument in bringing this war on the 
country. The Northwest opposed the South, as New England 
opposed the South. It is you, Medill, who is largely responsible 
for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until you 
had it. / have given it to you. What you have asked for you 
have had. Now you come here begging to be let off from the 
call for more men, which I have made to carry on the war you 
demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." For once 
"Abe was honest." 

It is impossible fully to understand the conditions that 
existed in 1861, preceding the war, or the conduct of the war 



SECESSION. 37 

and its results, without understanding the character of the man 
at the head of the Government at the time. The fact that he 
has been deified by his partisans at the North since his death, 
and that their estimate of him is being accepted by many histo- 
rians, for reasons of interest or timidity, has served only to 
mistify the facts and circumstances, and prevents the honest 
reader coming to a just conclusion. "The king can do no 
wrong — Lincoln was king," is too much the position of many 
Northern writers. 

It is desirable, therefore, to briefly outline the true Lincoln. 

What of "Honest Abe"? 

Was he honest, was he a hypocrite, or was he the weak 
tool of his partisans? The last we believe to be the case. 

Lunt says of him: "The new President was a person of 
scarcely more than ordinary natural powers, with a mind neither 
cultivated by education, nor enlarged by experience in public 
affairs. He was thus incapable of any wide range of thought, 
or, in fact, of obtaining any broad grasp of general ideas. 
His thoughts ran in narrow channels. He was inferior of pur- 
pose, so far as to be liable to be led by sharper minds and 
more resolute wills, though, like persons of that character, not 
unfrequently insisting upon minor points of consideration, 
whether right or wrong. He was of that class of men who, 
under color of good intentions, often fail of bringing any good 
purpose to pass. He had been put in training by the Western 
Republicans to hold a political contest with Mr. Douglas, in 
order to become his rival for the Presidency, as manifesting 
certain eccentricities of thought and expression and occasion- 
ally a humorous style of addressing popular assemblies which 
is taking with the multitude. By a large majority of the people 
he had never been heard of before his nomination ; and it was 
owing more to their ignorance than to their knowledge of him 
that he obtained their votes, in obedience to party dictation. 
He found himself at the head of affairs at the most critical 
period in the history of the country, and in the midst of dangers 
and embarrassments sufficient to try the abilities of the most 
prudent and sagacious statesmen ; and it is no wonder that he 
seldom understood what the situation demanded, and seldom 
failed to commit mistakes when he acted for himself. His char- 
acter appears to have been defiled by no great vices, but more 
than this was requisite in this position. Mr. Lincoln had a 



38 SECESSION. 

certain shrewdness, but was inoffensive in disposition, and in 
most inferior stations could scarcely have failed to earn good 
will. His dreadful assassination threw around him a halo of 
martyrdom. There could hardly have been a Chief Magistrate 
in whose case a fate so tragic and terrible could seem more 
foreign to all his personal characteristics. ... He was as 
far from being a tyrant as he was from being a statesman. 
He was undoubtedly patriotic, and sincerely so, by instinct, habit 
and sentiment ; but his well-known letter to the editor of the 
New York Tribune, overlooking the cause of union in attempt- 
ing to preserve it, shows that his patriotism was in the manner 
of those who do not clearly comprehend the true grounds of 
patriotism, or fully appreciate those objects of civil government 
which inspire the cordial affection of intelligent and earnest 
lovers of free institutions. There have been those since his death 
who have seen fit to compare him with the first great President : 
but there could scarcely exist a personal contrast more marked 
than that between his somewhat loosely constituted and indecisive 
character and the firm texture which distinguished the calm and 
moderate yet high-toned and sagacious mind of Washington." 

It is hard to fully know a man without knowing what he 
looks like ; we therefore give a pen picture of Lincoln by his 
law partner and devoted friend, Herndon. 

"Abraham Lincoln," he says, "was six feet four inches 
high. He was thin in chest, wiry, sinewy, raw-boned and narrow 
across the shoulders. His legs were unnaturally long and out 
of proportion to his body. His forehead was high and narrow, 
his jaws long, his nose long, large and blunt at the tip, ruddy 
and turned away towards the right. A few hairs here and there 
sprouted on his face. His chin projected far and sharp and 
turned up to meet a thick, material down-hanging lip. His 
cheeks were flabby, the loose skin in folds or wrinkles. His 
hair was brown, stiff and unkempt. His complexion was very 
dark, his skin yellow, shriveled and leathery- His whole aspect 
was cadaverous and woe-struck. His ears were large and stood 
out almost at right angles from his head. He had no dignity 
of manner, and was extremely ungainly and awkward. His 
voice was shrill and piping. He usually wore an old hat and a 
faded brown coat which hung baggy on his long, gaunt frame. 
His breeches were usually six inches too short, showing his big 



SECESSION. 39 

bony shins ; his sleeves were six inches too short, showing his 
big bony hands. His body was shrunk and shrivelled. . . . 
The first impression of a stranger on seeing Lincoln walk was 
that he was a tricky man ; his walk showed shrewdness." (Hern- 
don's Life of Lincoln.) 

Can we better sum up Lincoln and this branch of our sub- 
ject than by an extract from an able review of Lamon's Life 
of Lincoln, by Professor Bledsoe. Bledsoe, like Herndon and 
Lamon, practiced law in Springfield, Illinois, and like them was 
Lincoln's daily associate. "When he was nominated for the 
Presidency, we pondered much and marvelled what this strange 
thing could mean, and at last we came to the conclusion that 
it was the design of Providence to put infinite contempt upon 
the doctrine of universal suffrage." Bledsoe quotes Lamon as 
saying, 'It has pleased some of Mr. Lincoln's biographers to 
represent the removal of his father (from Kentucky to Indiana) 
as a flight from the taint of slavery. Nothing could be farther 
from the truth.' Tom Lincoln, as Lamon shows, fled from jus- 
tice and not from slavery. For having, in a low brawl with one 
Onlow, a mean blackguard like himself, bit off his nose and 
left his face disfigured for life, he found it convenient to escape 
from Hardin County and hide himself in the wilds of Indiana. 
There young Abe, about four years old at the time, was raised, 
in a little cabin fourteen feet square, made of rough, unhewn 
logs or poles, and daubed with mud. 

"This hole was, literally, a cage of unclean birds. For 
Tom Linkhorn, as he was called, and Nancy Hanks, the father 
and mother of our hero, were never married, but just lived 
together like the lower sort of negroes of the State from which 
they fled. When we heard the late Governor Morehead, of 
Kentucky, state this fact as well known to Tom Linkhorn's 
neighbors in Hardin County, Ave set it down as one of the 
thousand and one rumors which political prejudice and passion 
had forged. But it is proved and substantiated by Colonel 
Lamon in his biography of Lincoln. There the two 'mean 
whites' lived in this hut, without door or windows, and with no 
other floor than the naked earth. A bed made of poles, with 
one end driven in a crack of the house, and the other resting 
on forks driven into the dirt floor and covered with old petti- 
coats and other rags, formed their onty couch. Young Abe. 
our future President, had to climb to his roost in the loft by 



40 SECESSION. 

means of pins projecting from the logs of the house. It was 
adorned with three-legged stools for chairs, and a puncheon 
with four legs for a table. As for knives and forks, they had 
not, as yet, taken the place of fingers. It was in such a hovel 
and amid such associations that the future occupant of the 
White House was reared and educated until he was twenty-one 
years of age. He never had the least respect for father or 
mother — for Tom Linkhorn or Nancy Hanks. On the contrary 
he always abhorred his reputed father and had no tender feel- 
ings for his mother, Nancy Hanks. It is no wonder, then, 
that he should have become, as he did, a determined and bitter 
infidel all the rest of his days. Indeed, if he had been required 
to say the Lord's Prayer, his first Avords, 'Our Father,' must 
have made him shudder. 'When he went to church at all,' says 
his biographer, 'he went to mock and came away to mimic' 
This became the confirmed habit of his soul and conduct. 

"We think, on the whole, that Mr. Lincoln was 'the right 
man in the right place.' No man fitter than he, indeed, to 
represent the Northern Demos ; or, as Wendell Phillips has it, 
'the party of the North pledged against the party of the South.' 
For if, as we believe, that was the cause of brute force, blind 
passion, fanatical hate, lust of power, and the greed of gain, 
against the cause of constitutional law and human rights, then 
who was better fitted to represent it than the talented, but the 
low, ignorant and vulgar rail-splitter of Illinois." 

Wherein was Lincoln's greatness and what does the country 
owe him? We have seen that he, either intentionally or through 
weakness, brought the war on the country, and Colonel Hender- 
son, the great English writer and military critic, repeatedly 
affirms that through fear of danger to his capital and inter- 
ference with the plans of his generals he many times prevented 
the success of his armies. (Henderson's Science of War.) 
And another able English writer calls attention to the fact that 
he was responsible for the brutality of Butler and other officers. 
He says: "Mr. Lincoln showed his entire approval of the 
'Woman Order' (of Butler in New Orleans) by the favor and 
protection which to the last hour of his life he extended to its 
author. His warmest admirers observe a discreet silence on 
the subject; but the impunity of such an outrage would suffice 
to blacken indelibly a reputation on which there was no other 
stain. Unhappily this is not Mr. Lincoln's case. The Confed- 



SECESSION. 41 

erate Government repeatedly called attention to crimes of every 
kind, outrages upon the laws of nations and of war, from rob- 
bery and brutality to women up to cold blooded murder. In 
not a single instance is it alleged that the offenders were cen- 
sured or punished; but it stands on record that the remon- 
strances of Lee and Davis were received with sulky silence or 
returned with insult." (Greg's History U. S., p. 289.) 

Mr. Lincoln kept General Butler in command of the Army 
of the James "for political reasons," against the protest of his 
General-in-Chief and others, when Butler's unfitness and cor- 
ruption was known to all. Rhodes says, "Beyond all reasonable 
doubt he (Butler) was making money out of his country's life 
struggle," and General W. F. Smith says of him, "I want sim- 
ply to ask you how you can place a man in command of two 
army corps who is as helpless as a child on the field of battle, 
and as visionary as an opium-eater in council." (W. R. 81, 
p. 595.) Did this indicate greatness in Lincoln? And still 
General Grant says he was responsible for it. 



CHAPTER III. 

The War. 

We have seen that Mr. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, 
promised that he would not be the aggressor in a conflict between 
the States, and that hardly had the words passed from his lips 
when he commenced hostilities, after rejecting every effort to 
secure peace, by the South, both in and out of the Union. It 
is gratifying to Christian and humanitarian spirit to turn 
from Lincoln to the clear-cut benevolence, charity and love of 
country contained in Mr. Davis' inaugural address. 

"Our present position," he says, "has been achieved in a 
manner unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates 
the American idea that government rests upon the consent of 
the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter 
or abolish a government whenever it becomes destructive of the 
ends for which it was established. The declared purposes of 
the compact of union from which we have withdrawn were to 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity for the common 
defence, to promote the general welfare, and to secure the bless- 
ings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity : and when in 
the judgment of the sovereign States now comprising this 
Confederacy it had been perverted from the purposes for which 
it was ordained and had ceased to answer the ends for which it 
was established, an appeal to the ballot box declared that so 
far as they were concerned the government created by that 
compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted 
a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined 
to be inalienable. Of the time and occasion for its exercise 
they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself. The 
impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate 
the rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the hearts of 
men will judge the sincerity with which we have labored to pre- 
serve the government of our fathers in its spirit and in those 
rights inherent in it, which were solemnly proclaimed at the 

(42) 



THE WAR. 43 

birth of the States, and which have been affirmed and re-affirmed 
in the Bills of Rights of the several States. When they entered 
into the Union of 1789, it was with the undisputable recognition 
of the power of the people to resume the authority delegated 
for the purposes of that government whenever, in their opinion, 
its functions were perverted and its ends defeated. By virtue 
of this authority, the time and occasion requiring them to ex- 
ercise it having arrived, the sovereign States here represented 
have seceded from that union, and it is a gross abuse of lan- 
guage to denounce the act rebellion or revolution. They have 
formed a new alliance, but in each State its government has 
remained as before. The rights of persons and property have 
not been disturbed. The agency through which they have 
communicated with foreign powers has been changed, but this 
does not necessarily interrupt international relations. 

"Sustained by a consciousness that our transition from the 
former Union to the present Confederacy has not proceeded 
from any disregard on our part of our just obligations, or any 
failure to perform every constitutional duty — moved by no in- 
tention or design to invade the rights of others ; anxious to 
cultivate peace and commerce with all nations — if we may not 
hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will 
acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. We are doubly 
justified by the absence of wrong on our part and by wanton 
aggression on the part of others. There can be no cause to 
doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the 
Confederate States will be found equal to any measure of de- 
fence which may be required for their security. Devoted to 
agricultural pursuits, their chief interest is the export of a 
commodity required by ever}' manufacturing country. Our 
policy is peace, and the freest trade our necessities will permit. 
It is alike pur interest and that of all those to whom we would 
sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest 
practicable restrictions upon interchange of commodities. There 
can be but little rivalry between us and any manufacturing 
or navigating community, such as the Northwestern States of 
the American Union. 

"It must follow, therefore, that mutual interest would in- 
vite good will and kindness between them and us. If, however, 
passion or lust of dominion should cloud the judgment and 
influence the ambition of these States, we must prepare to meet 



44 THE WAR. 

the emergency and maintain, by the final arbitrament of the 
sword, the position we have assumed among the nations of the 
earth. We have now entered upon our career of independence, 
and it must be inflexibly pursued. Through many years of 
controversy with our late associates, the Northern States, we 
have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain respect 
for the rights to which we were entitled. As a necessity, not a 
choice, we have resorted to separation, and henceforth our ener- 
gies must be devoted to the conducting of our own affairs and 
perpetuating the Confederacy we have formed. If a just per- 
ception of mutual interest shall permit us peacably to pursue 
our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have 
been fulfilled. But if this be denied us, and the integrity and 
jurisdiction of our territory be assailed, it will but remain for 
us with a firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings 
of Providence upon a just cause. 

"It is joyous in perilous times to look around upon a peo- 
ple united in heart, who are animated and actuated by one and 
the same purpose and high resolve, with whom the sacrifices 
to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor, right, 
liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, but cannot prevent 
their progressive movements. Sanctified by justice and sus- 
tained by a virtuous people, let us reverently invoke the God 
of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to per- 
petuate the principles which by His blessing they were able to 
vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with the 
continuance of His favor, ever to be gratefully acknowledged, 
let us look hopefully forward to success, to peace, and to pros- 
perity." 

The Republican party was successful and war was forced 
upon the South. If its results could have been foreseen, not 
even the lust and hate of this party would have brought it 
about. No people ever contended for the right of self govern- 
ment against such odds or made such sacrifices of blood and treas- 
ure as the South did in that struggle. Gen. Piatt (U. S. Army) 
wrote in 1887 : "The true story of the late war has not yet been 
told. It probably never will be told. It is not flattering to our 
people; unpalatable truths seldom find their way into history. 
How these rebels fought the world never knew. For two years 
they kept back an army that girt their borders with a fire that 



THE WAR. 45 

shriveled our forces as they marched in, like tissue paper in a 
flame. Southern people were animated by a feeling that the 
word fanaticism feebly expresses. [Love of liberty expresses 
it.] For two years this feeling held those rebels to a conflict 
in which they were invincible. The North poured out its noble 
soldiery by the thousands and they fought well, but their broken 
columns and thinned lines drifted back upon our capital, with 
nothing but shameful disaster to tell of — the dead, the dying, 
the lost colors and captured artillery. Grant's road from the 
Rapidan to Richmond was marked by a highway of human 
bones. The Northern Army had more killed than the Confed- 
erate generals had in command." 

Again he says : "It is strange what magic lingers about 
the mouldering remains of Virginia's rebel leaders. Lee's very 
name confers renown on his enemies. The shadow of Lee's sur- 
rendered sword gives renown to an otherwise unknown grave." 

Even Henry Ward Beecher, who did much to bring on the 
conflict, adds his tribute to our devotion to a true and just 
cause. He says : "Where shall we find such heroic self-denial, 
such upbearing under every physical discomfort, such patience 
in poverty, in distress, in absolute want, as we find in the South- 
ern army ? They fight better in a' bad cause" [ ! ! ! do men ever 
fight better in a bad cause?] "than you do in a good one; they 
fight better for a passion than you do for a sentiment. They 
fight well and bear up under trouble nobly, they suffer and 
never complain, they go in rags and never rebel, they are in 
earnest for their liberty, they believe in it, and if they can, they 
mean to get it." That which made them do these superhuman 
deeds was the thought embodied in General Order No. 16 to 
the Army of Northern Virginia, which stirred every heart to 
victory or death, liberty or extermination. "Let every soldier 
remember that on his courage and fidelity depends all that makes 
life worth living — the freedom of his country, the honor of his 
people and the security of his home." What a blessing to the 
Federal soldier it is that the Confederate soldier did not know 
in advance of the days of reconstruction ; love of liberty would 
have been turned to mad fanaticism, and bravery to desperate 
courage. 

"The ability of a people for military exploits," says Dr. 
Bledsoe, late Assistant Secretary of War of the Confederacy, 
"depends in modern times, upon two classes of circumstances, 



46 THE WAR. 

the material and the moral. Among the former, the most im- 
portant are the numbers of its population, the magnitude of 
its revenues, its manufactories, commerce and agriculture, and 
its geographical position. The moral qualities which make 
a military nation are, natural bravery, love of glory, intelli- 
gence, independence, fortitude, and, above all, virtue and devoted 
religious faith. . . . The first consideration is obviously 
a comparison of the population and production of the two 
parties to the late contest. According to the census of 1860 
(the year before the contest began), the Northern States and 
territories had a population of 22,877,000. This aggregate 
includes a few hundred thousand negroes, but no Indians. The 
Confederate States had a population of 8,733,000, but of these 
3,664,000 were negroes, so that if they are deducted we have 
only 5,000,000 whites to sustain the struggle against 22,000,- 
000. But we have not yet reached the fair comparison of 
material strength. The campaigns of 1861 were only tenta- 
tive; the real 'tug of war' was yet to come, but in May, 1862, 
the Northern armies were in permanent occupation of all West- 
ern and Middle Tennessee" (and the entire Eastern part of 
the State was hostile in a large measure to the Confederacy, 
and furnished the North more men than the South), "of nearly 
the whole of Louisiana, of parts of Florida, the coast of South 
and North Carolina, Eastern, Western and Northern Virginia. 
This occupation continued generally to the end of the war. 
The population thus excluded from the support of the Confede- 
rate cause cannot be exactly estimated, but it was certainly 
more than 1,200,000. Thus the Confederacy bore the real brunt 
of the struggle with 3,800,000," and it must be remembered that 
this number was constantly diminished as the Southern States 
were occupied by Northern troops. 

"But the material resources were even more unequal than 
the numbers. The Confederate States were rather planting 
than agricultural communities ; their customary industry pro- 
duced rather those things which are the basis of Northern 
commerce than the wheat, beef, the wool and the horses, which 
sustain large armies. The North had far the larger portion 
of the commerce and the manufacturing arts. It retained the 
national army, navy, arsenals, treasury, government. The 
South had all these to create in the progress of the struggle. . . 

"The decisive circumstance which robbed the South of the 



THE WAR. 47 

defensive advantage of its wide territory was the superiority 
of its enemy upon the water. The North retained the use of the 
whole navy. While the South was chiefly a planting community, 
the North was manufacturing and maritime. Hence the mul- 
tiplication of ships and sailors, which continued and increased 
her naval superiority, was easy and rapid for her. This cause 
also enabled her, by her blockade, to exclude the Confederates 
from all foreign sources of supply. The navigable water was 
therefore all the territory of the North. The ocean and the 
gulf, which bounded two sides of the Confederacy, belonged to 
its invaders, furnishing them a cheap and swift way of ap- 
proach, secure from assault. It made all an exposed frontier 
and brought the enemy upon it at all times, as though he had 
embraced these two sides, as he did the other two, with contermi- 
nous territories of his own. . . . 

"But worse than this, the Confederate territories were pene- 
trated, in nearly every part, by navigable rivers, opening into 
the sea, which was the territory of the North. 

"The difficulties of invasion were also unexpectedly re- 
moved, for the North, by the new decision given to the question 
whether shore batteries could command a channel against ships 
of war, and this question was answered in the negative for this 
war. At that time torpedoes had not come into use to any 
extent." 

"The third subject of comparison," says Bledsoe, "the size 
of the armaments which were put in the field. The actual 
enlistments in the Northern Army amounted to 2,784,500. The 
actual strength of their armies at the close of the war is very 
accurately fixed by the returns of the volunteers mustered out 
of service. These were 1,034,000. So that adding the regular 
army we find to 'crush the rebellion' there were 2,784,500 men 
on land, or one soldier to every two white souls in the Con- 
federacy (soldiers, old men, sick, women, children and cowards), 
or about four soldiers to every enlisted man in the Confederate 
army during the war. This vast host was served by one horse 
or mule for every two men in the field, and 1080 sea and river 
transports. It was furnished during this war with 8,000 
cannon and 12,000,000 small arms. To this we must add the 
United States navy. This arm employed 126,553 sailors and 
marines, besides countless mechanics and servants about the 
naval arsenals. The report of the Secretary of the Navy, 



48 THE WAR. 

1864, gives, including vessels under construction, a total of 
671 vessels of 510,396 tons and 4,610 guns, or with army trans- 
ports 1,751 vessels and 12,610 guns, or one vessel for 350 
Confederate soldiers, one cannon for every 50 Confederates, and 
20 muskets and 2 horses for every man in the Confederate 
army. Against these numbers and reserves what had the South ? 
Mr. Bledsoe says : "The aggregate of all the levies made during 
the whole war was about equal to the available force present 
for duty at one time with their enemies, or about one-fifth of 
the whole number enlisted by the North during the war. If 
we estimate the Confederate forces effective for duty at any 
one time by this ratio, we should give them less than 125,000 
soldiers in actual service the day their armies were strongest. 
When we remember that many of their levies were from districts 
soon occupied permanently by the enemy, to which, therefore, 
no provost marshal could ever go to reclaim absentees, we might 
reasonably conclude that the number of Confederates actually 
in the field at any one time bore a still smaller ratio to the total 
of levies. But it was impossible for the Confederacy to mobilize 
for campaigning as large a ratio as their enemy did. 

They had the same length of frontier to guard, and longer, 
for they had the sea line as well as the land; they were, there- 
fore, compelled to reserve for garrison and post a far larger 
part relative to their whole force. Hence, while the North had 
in the field May, 1864, 620,000, the South had but 125,000 in 
the several active armies. 

"The disproportion of forces and the relative character 
of the rival armies may also be illustrated by the numbers 
actually arrayed against each other in several battles. At the 
critical turn of the first battle of Manassas, the official reports 
of Generals Beauregard and McDowell show that the decisive 
grapple for the key of the battlefield was made by 6,500 
Confederates against 20,000 United States troops. The Con- 
federates won it. At Sharpsburg 33,000 Confederates repulsed 
90,000 United States soldiers. At Chancellorsville 35,000 Con- 
federates beat General Hooker's 100,000. 

"In the Wilderness General Lee met General Grant's 142,- 
000 with 50,000, and without accession to this number continued 
to break the Federal army increased by 60,000 more. In the 
battle of Winchester in 1864 Sheridan only won a dearly bought 
victory from General Early by hurling 50,000 upon his 12,000. 



THE WAR. 49 

In the closing struggle Lee's 33,000 were not dislodged from 
Petersburg and Richmond until their assailants were again 
increased to 180,000, and finally, the remnant of Lee's heroic 
army did not surrender to this enormous host until it was re- 
duced to less than 8,000 muskets." Upon the tombstone of each 
of this 8,000 should be engraved "Surrendered at Appomattox" 
— an imperishable honor to the latest generation. 

"The Confederate armies," says Bledsoe, "certainly in- 
cluded a class of patriotic soldiers the noblest which this age 
can produce, under any clime. The class was numerous; it 
embraced, perhaps, at all stages of the war, a majority of the 
levies. But there was also a large element of baser metal — 
men who begrudged their sacrifices for liberty and shirked dan- 
ger. And as death thinned the ranks of the original armies, 
this worse material became relatively larger. But the great 
need of the Confederate army was officers. It never had the 
leisure nor the skilled officers to organize a thorough army. 
The population, though gallant, was ignorant of war, by reason 
of two generations of peace. If their army had been better 
officered and drilled the result of the war might have been 
different." (Bledsoe in Southern Review. "Science of War," 
Henderson, 216.) 

There is another element of strength possessed by the 
North which the South did not possess. By means of huge 
bounties, they were enabled to draw armies from all the nations 
of the earth, and from the Southern slaves, 494,900 of the 
former and 186,017 of the latter, besides a small contingent 
of Indians. The South practically fought with her own sons 
alone. 

Even the whole people of the North, with negroes and 
the world back of them, were forced to use other methods, which 
the Japanese of today would scorn. One of them was the 
incarceration of unarmed citizens taken in the pursuits of civil 
life, who might perchance either become a soldier, or might aid 
some soldier, or his family, by his industry. 

"Another was the destruction of food and implements of 
industry among the peaceful citizens. What did it matter that 
helpless women, litttle children, old men who had shed their 
blood in former days for the United States, the poor negroes, 
innocent in every sense, of the war, might perish of the dire 
but undeserved doom of famine? History will never disclose the 



50 THE WAR. 

ruthless and universal diligence of the United States armies in 
this work of destruction. It was openly boasted that if their 
generals could not 'crush rebellion' they had enlisted one more ft; 
all-conquering general — starvation." The sweeping ravages of ^* 
Sheridan in Virginia under express orders from the Commander- 
in-Chief, and of Sherman in South Carolina and Georgia, will 
never be forgotten while history has a verdict to utter. Sherman 
boasted of having destroyed $100,000,000 worth of property in 
Georgia alone, while Sheridan declared that a crow flying across 
the wasted Shenandoah Valley would be compelled to carry his 
own rations. 

It is sad for reconstructed Americans to recall the barbari- 
ties of their fellow citizens, but in defence of their own section 
and people from the wilful falsehoods which have been uttered 
against them it is necessary to record the truth on the pages 
of history. Only a few samples will be given, and they will 
come from official sources, and refer to men whom the North 
have selected as their representative great generals by placing 
monuments to them in our capital city. Whether or not these 
snap judgments on posterity will prove permanent remains to 
be seen. We predict that that righteous judge will set them 
aside with wrath and indignation, consigning them to oblivion. 

General Sherman said, "War is hell," and we shall see what 
he contributed to make it such. 

In his official report he says : "We consumed the corn and 
fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of 
a line from Atlanta to Savannah ; also the sweet potatoes, hogs, 
sheep and poultry, and carried off more than ten thousand 
horses and mules. I estimate the damage done to the State of 
Georgia at one hundred million dollars, at least twenty million 
of which enured to our benefit, and the remainder was simply 
waste and destruction." A soldier writing from Sherman's army 
to the Detroit Fnee Press says : "At the very beginning of the 
campaign at Dalton, the Federal soldiery had received encour- 
agement to become vandals. . . . When Sherman cut loose 
from Atlanta, everybody had license to throw off restraint and 
make Georgia 'drain the bitter cup.' The Federal who wants 
to learn what it was to license an army to become vandals should 
mount a horse at Atlanta and follow Sherman's route for fifty 
miles. He can hear stories from the lips of women that would 
make him ashamed of the flag that waved over him as he went 



THE WAR. 51 

into battle. Where the army had passed nothing was left but 
a trail of desolation and despair. No house escaped robbery, 
no woman escaped insult, no building escaped the firebrand, 
except by some strange interposition. War may license an 
army to subsist on the enemy, but civilized warfare stops at 
live stock, forage and provisions. It does not enter the houses 
of the sick and helpless and rob women of their finger rings 
and carry off their clothing." 

On pages 124-5 of his Memoirs, General Sherman quotes 
from a letter from the Mayor of Atlanta addressed to him as 
follows : "Many poor women are in an advanced state of preg- 
nancy, others now have young children, and whose husbands 
for the greater part are either in the army or dead. Some say, 
I have a sick one at my house ; who will wait on them when I 
am gone? Others say, What are we to do? We have no house 
to go to, and no means to buy, build or rent* any ; no parents, 
relatives or friends to go to. ... This being so (they say), 
how is it possible for the people still here (mostly women and 
children) to find any shelter? And how can they live through 
the winter in the woods — no shelter, no subsistence, in the midst 
of strangers who know them not, and without the power to assist 
them much if they were willing to do so. 

"This is but a feeble picture of the consequences of this 
measure. You know the war — the horrors and the sufferings 
cannot be described by words ; imagination can only conceive it ; 
and we ask you to take these things into consideration." 

To this General Sherman says he replied: "I have your 
letter of the 11th in the nature of a petition to revoke my order 
removing all the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it 
and give full credit to your statements of the distress that will 
be occasioned, and yet I shall not revoke my orders." And he 
did not ; the people were driven out and their houses burned. 

General Sherman further says (p. 185) that when he 
reached General Howell Cobbs' plantation he "sent back word 
to General Davis to explain whose plantation it was, and in- 
structed him to spare nothing." 

But Sherman's infamy is not all told. On December 18th, 
1864, General Halleck writes Sherman: "Should you capture 
Charleston, I hope that by some accident the place may be 
destroyed, and if a little salt should be thrown upon its site, 
it may prevent the future growth of nullification and secession." 



52 THE WAR. 

On December 24, 1864, {the day before Christmas) Sherman re- 
plies: "I will bear in mind your hint as to Chaleston, and do 
not think that 'salt' will be necessary. When I move, the Fif- 
teenth Corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their po- 
sition will naturally bring them into Charleston first, and if you 
have watched the history of that corps, you will have remarked 
that they generally do their wark pretty well. The truth is the 
whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to work ven- 
geance upon South Carolina ; I almost tremble for her fate, but 
feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her. I look upon 
Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston, and I doubt if we shall 
spare the public puildings there as we did at Milledgeville." 2 
Memoirs, p. 223, 227-8. 

In truth he spared nothing at Columbia, but left it a ruin. 
Of this he says (Vol. 2 Memoirs, p. 288) : "Having utterly 
ruined Columbia, the right wing began its march northward." 

On February 21, 1865, General Hampton writes General 
Sherman as follows : 

. . . "You permitted, if you have not ordered, the com- 
mission of these offences against humanity and the rules of 
war. You fired into the city of Columbia without a word of 
warning. After its surrender by the Mayor, who demanded 
protection to private property, you laid the whole city in ashes, 
leaving amid its ruins thousands of old men and helpless women 
and children, who are likely to perish of starvation and exposure. 
Your line of march can be traced by the lurid light of burning- 
houses, and in more than one houshold is an agony far more 
bitter than death. 

"The Indian scalped his victim, regardless of age or sex, 
but with all his barbarity, he always respected the person of his 
female captives. Your soldiers, more savage than the Indian, 
insult those whose natural protectors are absent." 3 "Great 
Civil War," p. 601. 

Sherman not only burned Columbia, but he lied about it. 
He says he charged in his official report that it was destroyed by 
General Hampton, and confesses : "I did so pointedly to shake 
the faith of his people in him." (2 Memoirs, p. 287.) 

In his work entitled "Ohio in the War," Mr. Whitelaw 
Reid says of the burning of Columbia: "It was a monstrous 
barbarity of the barbarous march," and again, "before his move- 
ments began, General Sherman begged 'permission to turn his 
army loose in South Carolina and devastate it. He used this 



THE WAR. 53 



permission in the full." [These barbarities were supposed here- 
tofore to have been Sherman's, but this shows higher authorities 
knew of it and approved of it.] "He protested that he did not 
wage war on women and children. But, under the operation of 
his°orders, the last morsel of food was taken from hundreds of 
destitute families that his soldiers might feast in needless and 
riotous abundance. Before his eyes rose, day after day, the 
mournful clouds of smoke on every side, that told of old people 
and their grandchildren driven, in midwinter, from the only 
roofs that were to shelter them, by the flames which the wanton- 
ness of his soldiers had kindled. With his full knowledge and 
tacit approval, too great a portion of his advance resolved itself 
into bands of jewelry thieves and plate-closet burglars. Yet if 
a single soldier was punished for a single outrage or theft during 
that°entire movement, we have found no mention of it in all 
the voluminous records of the march." (Vol. 1, p. 275-479, Life 
of J. E. Johnston, by Bradley T. Johnston.) 

With this confession we leave General Sherman, and turn 
to General "Phil" Sheridan, another whom his country is to 
honor with a statue in Washington. 

On October 7, 1864, he writes General Grant from the Val- 
ley of Virginia as follows : "I have destroyed over 2,000 barns 
filled with wheat and hay and farming implements ; over 70 mills 
filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army 
4,000 head of stock, and have killed and issued to the troops not 
less than 3,000 sheep. This destruction embraces the Luray 
Valley and Little Fort Valley, as well as the Main Valley. . . . 
Lieutenant John R. Meigs, my engineer officer, was murdered 
beyond Harrisonburg, near Dayton. For this atrocious act 
all the houses within an area of five miles were burned" Lieut. 
Meigs was killed in a fight (see 9 Southern Historical Society 
Papers, p. 77). 

[Note. — It is interesting to note that the ancestral home 
of Abraham Lincoln's family was among those destroyed, and 
also that all of Lincoln's Virginia cousins were in the Confed- 
erate Army.] 

On August 5, 1864, General Grant wrote General Hunter: 
"In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley, where it is expected you 
will have to go first or last, it is desirable that nothing should 
be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, for- 
age and stock wanted for the use of your command; such as can- 
not be consumed, destroy." Hunter did what he could, and 



54 THE WAR. 

Sheridan did the rest. Horace Greeley says: "This order, 
Sheridan, in returning down the Valley, executed to the letter. 
Whatever of grain and forage had escaped appropriation by one 
or another of the armies which had so frequently chased each 
other up and down this narrow but fertile and productive vale, 
was now given to the torch." 

Nothing can better tell of Hunter's ruthless acts than the 
following letter to him from one of his victims : 

Shepherdstown, Va., July 20, 1864. 
General Hunter: — 

Yesterday your underling, Capt. Martindale, of the New 
York Veteran Cavalry, executed your infamous order and burned 
my house. You have had the satisfaction ere this of receiving 
from him the information that your order was fulfilled to the let- 
ter, the dwelling house with nearly all the furniture and every 
outbuilding, seven in number, with their contents. I, therefore, 
a helpless woman whom you have cruelly wronged, address you, 
a Major General of the United States Army, and demand why 
this was done? What was my offence? My husband was ab- 
sent, an exile — he had never been a politician, or engaged in any 
way in the struggle now going on, his age preventing. This 
David Strother, your chief of staff, could have told you so. The 
house was built by my father, a Revolutionary soldier, who 
served the whole seven years for your independence. There I 
was born, there the sacred dead repose. It was my house and 
my home, and there has your niece, who has lived amongst us 
ever since this horrid war began up to the present time, met with 
all kindness and hospitality at my hands. Was it for this that 
you turned my young daughter and little son out upon the world 
without a shelter? Or was it because my husband is a grand- 
son of the Revolutionary patriot and rebel, Richard Henry Lee, 
and a near kinsman of the noblest Christian warrior, the greatest 
of Generals, Robert E. Lee? Heaven's blessings be upon his 
head forever. You and your government have failed to con- 
quer, subdue, or match him, and disappointed rage and malice 
find vent upon the helpless and inoffensive. Hyena-like, you 
have torn my heart to pieces, and demon-like you have done it 
without even the pretext of revenge, for I never saw or harmed 
you. Your office is not to lead like a brave man and soldier your 
men to fight in the ranks of war, but your work has been to sep- 

2 Am. Conflict 6, io-ii. 2 Grant's Memoirs 581, 361-5. See for further details Report 
of Hon. Geo. L. Christain 1891, Confederate Veterans Virginia. 



THE WAR. 55 

arate yourself from all danger and with your incendiary band 
steal unawares upon helpless women and children to insult and 
destroy." (Was it for this reason he was chosen to try Mrs. 
Surrat). 

"Two fair homes did you yesterday ruthlessly lay in ashes, 
giving not a moment's warning to the startled inmates of your 
wicked purpose, turning mother and children out of doors. In 
the case of the Hon. A. R. Boteler, both father and mother were 
far away, and any heart than Capt. Martindale's and yours 
would have been touched by that little circle, comprising a wid- 
owed daughter just risen from a bed of illness, her three little 
fatherless babes, the eldest not five years old, and her young 
heroic sister. I repeat, any MAN would have been touched by 
that sight. 

"But one might as well hope to find mercy and feeling in 
the heart of a hungry wolf bent upon its prey of young lambs, 
as to search for such qualities in the bosom of a Captain Mar- 
tindale. You have chosen well your man for such deeds ; doubt- 
less you will promote him. A Colonel of the Federal Army has 
stated that you deprived several of your officers of their com- 
mand because they refused to carry out your malignant mis- 
chief. All honor to their names for this at least. They were 
men ; they had human hearts, and blush for such a commander. 
I ask, who that does not wish infamy and disgrace attached to 
him forever, would serve under you? 

"Your name will stand on history's page as the hunter of 
weak women and helpless children — a hunter to destroy defence- 
less villages and refined and beautiful homes, to torture afresh 
the agonized hearts of suffering widows. The hunter of Africa's 
poor sons and daughters, to lure them on to ruin and death of 
soul and body. The hunter with the relentless heart of a wild 
beast, the face of a fiend, the form of a man. Oh ! earth ! be- 
hold the monster! Can I say, 'God forgive you?' No prayer 
can be offered for you. Were it possible for human lips to raise 
your name Heavenwards angels would thrust the foul thing back 
again and demons claim their own. The curse and the scorn of 
the upright and manly, the hatred of the true and honorable 
will follow you and yours throughout all time and brand your 
name Infamy! Infamy! Again I demand why you burned 
my home? Answer me as you must one day answer before the 
Searcher of all hearts, why you added this atrocious deed to your 
many other crimes. Mrs. Henrietta Bedinger Lee, 

Wife of Edmund/. Lee and daughter of Major 
Henry Bedinger of the Revolutionary Army. 



56 THE WAR. 

In his report of April 27, 1864, to Adjutant General 
Cooper, Gen. R. E. Lee, says : 

"I cannot conclude without alluding to the destruction of 
the property of citizens by the enemy. Houses were torn down 
or rendered uninhabitable, furniture and farming implements 
broken or destroyed, and many families, most of them in humble 
circumstances, stripped of all they possessed and left without 
shelter and without food. I have never witnessed on any previ- 
ous occasion such entire disregard of the usages of civilized 
warfare and the dictates of humanity." (Long's Life of Lee.) 

It is useless to continue these samples of barbarity. Enough 
has been given to exhibit the extent to which Americans can fall. 
Butler's infamous order, insulting the ladies in New Orleans, 
called forth the "astonishment and deepest indignation" of Lord 
Palmerston in the British House of Commons. (2 Greeley, 100, 
2 Greg's History U. S., p. 287.) In the words of Jeremiah S. 
Black, "I will not pain you by a recital of the wanton cruelties 
they inflicted upon unoffending citizens. I have neither space, 
nor skill, nor time, to paint them. A life size portrait of them 
would cover more canvas than there is on the earth. 
Since the fall of Robespierre nothing has occurred to cast so 
much disrepute upon Republican institutions." 

COST OF THE WAR. 

The most astounding fact connected with the civil war is its 
cost in dollars. The following figures have been obtained from 
the most reliable sources and are believed to be very nearly cor- 
rect : 

Cost of the war to the United States $3,086,438,635 

Confederate bonds lost by the war 2,000,000,000 

Confederate notes lost by the war 500,000,000 

Census valuation of property in the South 1860 

in excess of valuation 1870 2,372,820,179 

Bank Capital and Circulation lost 112,986,429 

Specie spent in Europe during war by the South 18,075,000 
Increase of State debts of South during recon- 
struction 293,020,641 

Pensions paid by U. S. since 1865 3,127,804,280 

Interest paid by U. S. since 1865 on U. S. debt . 2,794,318,623 



$14,305,463,787 



THE WAR. 57 

The debt incurred by States and cities of the South should 
be added to this, but we have been unable to obtain the amount. 

Nothing shows more conclusively the disparity between the 
North and the South, in the conflict, or its desperate character, 
than a comparison of the numbers and losses on each side. To 
indicate the fact that the South did not fight the North alone, 
the foreign element is also given. 

Whites enlisted in the Northern Army 2,272,333 

Whites enlisted from Southern States in U. S. Army . 316,424 

Negroes enlisted in U. S. Army 118,017 

Indians enlisted in U. S. Army 3,530 

2,778,304 
It is claimed by Northern writers that if reduced to 

a basis of three years' enlistments this would be 2,200,000 
Confederate enlistments 605,006 

Northern numerical superiority 1,594,994 

The United States Army was made up in part of 

Germans 176,800 

Irish 144,200 

British Americans 53,500 

English , 45,500 

Other foreigners 74,900 

Negroes 186,017 

680,917 
605,005 



Deduct number of Southern, army, making foreigners 

and negroes in excess of Southern army 75,912 

Southern men in U. S. Army, including those from 

Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri 316,424 

Foreigners 494,900 

Negroes 186,017 

998,613 

Number in Southern Army 605,005 

In excess of total Southern Army 393,608 

Soldiers from Northern States 1,211,387 

or just twice the Southern Army. 

See Rept. Sec. Treasury 1904, p. 98. U. S. Census 1860-1870. Cong. Record, 1st Ses. 
51st Cong. p. 6566, " Southern States "—Curry. Confederate States— Schwab. 



58 THE WAR. 

Comparison of the Armies at Various Periods of the War. 



1861 


Confederate 


U.S. 
186,751 


Excess of U. S 


1862 


289,000 


637,122 


348,126 


1863 


343,000 


918,191 


575,191 


1864 


238,000 


860,737 


522,737 


1865 


133,433 


1,000,516 


867,083 



N. Y. Tribune Letter June 27, 1868. War Records. Letter Gen. Cooper, So. Hist. 
Papers. Battles and Leaders, Vol. 4, 767. 

Chas. A. Dana Am. Encyclopedia (1875) Vol. V. p. 232. 

Numbers in Battles. 



Battles 



Numbers 



Confederate U. S. 



U.S. 



Confed'ate U. 8. 



Bull Run 

Shiloh 

Seven Pines 

Seven Days 

Cedar Run... 

Second Manassas 
Sharpsburg 

Fredericksburg .. 

Chickamauga 

Nashville 

Chancellorsville . 

Gettysburg 

Chattanooga 

Stone River 

Wilderness 

Spottsylvania 

Cold Harbor 



L T 

T 
T 
H 
L 



18,000 
40,000 
39,000 
80,054 
21,000 
49,077 
35,255 
75,524 
60,000 
71,000 
39,000 
40,000 
53,303 



T 59,900 

H 33,000 
H 37,712 
J 64,000 
H 50,000 
58,000 



! 18,000 
58,000 
57,000 

! 107,000 
12,000 

; 73,000 
87,164 

120,000 

57.000 
55,000 

; 133,708 

I 93,000 

60,000 
43,000 
141,160 
100,000 
110,000 



18,000 
12,000 
27,000 

23,921 
51,909 

50,000 

16,000 
78,000 

33,100 

27,000 
5,288 
77,160 
50,000 
52,000 



1,969 
9,735 
6,134 F 
20,614 F 
1,314 
9,197 F 
9,500 

5,315 F 

16,456 F 

3,500 
12,764 F 
10,000 
22,969 F 
18,000 

6,667 

9,500 
11,000 

8,000 

1,700 



3,334 F 
13,047 F 

5,031 F 
18,849 

2,387 F 
14,462 F 
12,410 F 

12,653 F 

16,179 F 
3,000 

17,287 

23,001 F 

5,382 F 

9,000 
17,666 F 
18,737 F 
12,737 F 



Note. (J) Dr. J. Wm. Jones— Memorial Volume. (H) Henderson's Jackson. 
(T) Four Years with Lee— Taylor, p. 62-65. (T) W. H. Taylor in So. Hist. Soc. Papers, 6 
V., 12 p. (F) Regimental Losses— Fox, p. 54i-55°- This work of Fox is very reliable and 
has few mistakes. Those of Livimore and Phisterer are very unreliable, and nothing 
they say should be accepted without verification. (L) Long, Life of Lee (7 days fight 
30000 under Magruder were kept in reserve (p. 170), and should not be counted more than 
McDowell at Fredericksburg. 



THE WAR. 59 

(a) Federal prisoners in Confederate hands 270,000 

(b) Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 220,000 

50,000 

(c) Confederates died in Federal prisons 26,4*86 

(d) Federals died in Confederate prisons 22,570 



3,966 

Percentage Confederate deaths in Federal prisons, twelve. 
Percentage Federal deaths in Confederate prisons, nine. 

The figures given above, as might be expected, have been 
violently assailed by Northern writers. We would not attempt 
to reply to them, owing to the total lack of proof to sustain 
their criticism, but for the fact that they have been followed 
by some writers of standing. For their benefit, and for refer- 
ence of the Southern people, we give the following. 

The figure most assailed is the total number of men in 
the Confederate army. 

I. All Confederate officers who know the facts agree in 
stating that the total number of men in the army was not over 
600,000. Among them are Vice-President Alexander H. Ste- 
phens \ Adjutant-General Samuel Cooper 2 , General J. A. 
Early 3 , Gen. Marcus J. Wright 4 , Dr. Joseph Jones 5 , General 
John Preston , Dr. Bledsoe (in Southern Review), Assistant 
Secretary of War. 

II. By adding together the Confederate prisoners in the 
hands of the United States at the close of the war, the soldiers 
who surrendered in 1865, the killed, those who died of wounds 
or disease, deserters and discharged, we have a total of 605,006, 
to wit: 

Killed 52,954 

Died of wounds 21,554 

" " disease 59,297 

" " prison 26,439 

" from other causes 40,000 

Total 200,000 

(a) Vol. 5 Ex. Doc. 1864. 

(c) Stanton's Report, July 12, 1866. 

(d) A. H. Stephens, War between the States, Vol. 2. Andersonville Prison, by R. R. 
Stephenson. 



60 THE WAR. 

5 Surrendered 174,223 

c Held as prisoners 1865 90,000 

7 Deserters 83,372 

s Discharged 57,411 

405,006 

605,006 
III. Again. The Confederate returns show there were 

enlisted men in the Confederate Army January, 

1862 318,011 

Gen. Preston, Superintendent of Conscription, C. S. A., 

reports February, 1865, that from February, 

1862, there had been 

Conscriptions 87,993 

Enlistments east of the Mississippi River 72,292 

478,296 
Estimated conscriptions and enlistments west of the 

River and elsewhere 120,000 

Total 598,296 

The New York Tribune, of June 26, 1867, contained the 
following table, for a long time supposed to have been the work 
of Swinton, but now thought to have been the work of White- 
law Reid, now proprietor of the Tribune, and Ambassador to 
Great Britain. He says : 

"Among the documents which fell into our hands at the 
downfall of the Confederacy are the returns, very nearly com- 
plete, of the Confederate armies from their organization in the 
summer of 1861, down to the Spring of 1865. These returns 
have been carefully analyzed and I am enabled to furnish the re- 
turns in every department and for almost every month from these 
official sources. We judge in all 600,000 different men were in 
the Confederate ranks during the war." 

1 Stephens, Vol. II, p. 630. 

- So. Hist. Soc.Soc. Papers, Vol. VII, p. 287. 

3 Id 6 Vol. p. 24. Hist. Soc. Papers XIX p. 254. II, p. 20. Am . Encyclopoedia (1875) p. 
232, Chas A. Dana, Asst. Sec. of War, U. S., Editor. 

4 His. Soc. Papers, Vol. XX, 114. 

XIX, 254. 

5 Stanton's Rep. Ex. Doc. 39 Congress. 

B Gen. Grant, Life of Grant, Mannsfield. 

7 Report of Gen. Preston— in report Gen. Fry, p. 127. 



THE WAR. 



61 



Department of Northern Virginia from February 1862 
to February, 1865. 













Notes of 




From Tribune 




From other Authorities 


Author- 
ities 


1862 


Comman- 
der 


For 
Duty 


Pres- 
ent 


Present 
& Absent 


1862 

May 


For Duty 
53688 


Pres- 
ent 


Present 
& Absent 


T 


Feb. 


J. E. Johnston 


47687 


56396 


84225 




61898 


76331 


98959 


3 


June 


R. E. Lee 










56496 


78891 


119242 


4 


July 




* 


69559 


94686 


137030 


July 


69500 






T 


Sept. 




' 


52609 


62713 


139143 


Sept. 


33689 


41520 




Tl 


Oct. 




■ 


67805 


79335 


153778 


Oct. 


68033 


79595 


153778 


2 


Nov. 




' 


79072 


86583 


153778 


Nov 


73000 


86569 


153773 


T9 


Dec. 


79072 


91094 


152853 


Dec. 5. 


78400 


90944 




T9 


1863 










1863 


72226T 






T 


Jan. 




' 


72226 


93297 


144605 


Jan. 


88884 




153958 




Feb. 




' 


58559 


74435 


114175 


Feb. 


58559 






T 


March 




' 


60298 


73578 j 109839 


May 2 


60298 


81568 


129041 


T9 


May 




' 


68353 


887331133679 


May 31 


59457 






8 


July 




' 


41135 


53611 ! 117602 


June 


41200 




T 


Aug. 




' 


56327T 71964 j 133264 


June 


74459 


88735; 133659 


5 


Sept. 




' 


44367 


55221 


95164 


July 1 


59900 






T8 


Oct. 




' 


45614 


57251 


97211 


July 20 




50184 


109915 


9 


Nov. 




' 


48267 


56088 


96576 


Sept. 


44327 






T 


Dec. 




43558 


57785 


91253 


Oct. 

Nov. 
Dec. 


46497 
48100 
43400 


53995 


90055 


T6 
T 
T 


1864 










1864 










Jan. 


" 


35849 


45139 1 79602 


Jan. 


46651 






T 


Feb. 


" 


33811 


39562 68435 


Feb. 


35800 






T 


March j 39407 


46151 79202 


March 


39403 






T 


April 


" 


52626 


61218 97576 


Ap. 20 


52600 


62925 


98246 


9 


May 


" 


57097 


680441135805 


June 


54751 






T 


June 


" 


44247 


58984 ! 146838 


July 10 


57100 


64844 


135805 


T9 


July 


" 


62875 


82535 1177103 


Aug. 


44247 






T 


Aug. 


" 


44247 


58984 1 146838| Sept. 


50583 






T 


Oct. 


" 


62875 


82535 177103 


Oct. 


45087 






T 


Nov. 


" 


69290 


87860 


181826 


Nov. 


43225 






T 


Dec. 


" 


66533 


79318 


155792 


Dec. 


66533 






T 


1865 










1865 










Jan. 


" 


53445 


69678 


144627 


Jan. 


56412 








Feb. 




59094 


73349 


160411 


Feb. 28 


45623 


55760 


122487 


9 



Notes, (i) War Records, S. i, Vol. XIX, part 112, p. 621. 

(2) Id. p. 674, 713, 

(3) 127 Id. 822. 

(4) Id. 1 176. 

(5) 128 Id. 615. 

(6) Id. 1073. 

(7) Id. S. i, Vol. 19, p. 638. 

(8) So. Hist. Soc. Papers, Vol. 6, p. 12. 

(9) Long's Life of Lee, Appendix; all returns for 
marked blank. 

(T) W. H. Taylor, 157, etc. 



; Duty" in 1864 and 1865 are 



THE WAR. 



Members in Confederate Armies at Dates Named. 



Tribune Table 


Other Authorities 




Departments 


For 
Duty 


Pres- 
ent 


Present 
and 
Absent 


1 
JDate 


For 
Duty 


Pres- 
ent 


Prcseut 

and 

Absent 


Notes of 
Author- 
ities 


1862 
June 


Northern Virginia. 

Northern Virginia. 
S. C. and G 


70000 
19000 
17000 
40000 
15000 
49000 
7000 


95000 
25000 
21000 
53000 
18000 
68000 
9000 


139000 
31000 
27000 
87000 
26000 
99000 
10000 


J1861 
Dec. 

1862 
Oct. 

Apri] 

Nov. 

Nov. 

June 


57337 

52790 
20463 
25040 
30049 
13458 

6765 
62453 

6882 


71717 
25159 
32434 
36172 
16303 

9127 
77663 
7233 


139144 
32170 
47400 
60586 
24895 

10018 
103999 


10 

a 
b h 




S. Va. andN. C... 

Tennessee 

East Tennessee 


cb 
f 
n 




Gulf 

Louisiana' 


k 

1 




Trans Mississippi... 


s 




Total 


21700 


289000 


412000 












1863 
Mar. 


Northern Virginia.. 
S. C. and Ga 


60000 
32000 
45000 
6000 
50000 
11000 
49000 
20000 
8000 


73000 
36000 
53000 
6000 
66000 
16000 
59000 
25000 
9000 


109000 
43000 
73000 
17000 
96000 
23000 
82000 
41000 
10000 


1863 
May2 
Jan. 
May 


60298 
28000 
19630 


81568 
34132 
22822 
10033 
57423 
15419 
61495 
30389 
10395 


129041 
47491 
30757 

98215 

82318 
46021 


9 
d 




S. Va., andN. C... 


h 
h 




Tennessee 


Dec. 486 


A 

k 




East Tennessee 

Mississippi'. 




8600 
48829 
26009 
7345 




Trans Mississippi... 
Gulf ..... 


* k 




Total 


287000 


343000 


484000 




253552! 






1864 
April 


Northern Virginia.. 
S. C. and Ga 


52000 
26000 
5000 
7000 
44000 
15000 
15000 
38000 
7000 


105000 

29000 

6000 

9000 

64000 

21000 

20000 

53000 

8000 


156000 
39000 
7000 
13000 
97000 
44000 
34000 
77000 
12000 


1864 
April 


52600 ! 62925 
6000 ! 15419 
41856 


98246 


T9 




S.C.Va.andN. C. 


k 






1 10 




East Tennessee 


10645 
16000 
32582 


11836 
20024 


19595 1 f 
35583 o 




Trans Mississippi... 

Gulf :.... 


67237 


u 




Total 


209000 


270000 


443000 












1864 

Nov 




67000 
21000 
3000 
30000 


88000 
15000 
4000 
46000 


182000 
21000 

5000 
96000 

7000 
38000 
77000 


1864 
Nov. 


43225" 
60334 
12056 

18708 
3395 
11840 
30239 


71854 
14630 

25053 
3782 
15595 
43054 


773G6 
21673 

77366 
7138 
32148 
74397 


T 




S. C. andGa 






Gulf 












East Tennessee 

Mississippi 

Trans Mississippi .. 


3000 | 4000 
15000 1 21000 
38000 1 52000 


e 
e 
e 




Total 


176000238000 


143000 




144910 


196016 


4000001 e 



Notes, (a) War Records, Ser. 8, Vol. XIX, part II, p. 639. (b) Id. 28, p. 486. (c) 
Id. p. 7SS. (d) Id. 38, p. 1412-5. (3) Id. 128, p. 10. (g) Id. S. I., Vol. 22, part 2, p. 412, Id. 
128, p. 1073. (h) Id. Vol. 128, p. 278, S30, 380, 61s, 1003. (i) Id. 127, 1176; Id. 1178, 6380 ; Id. 
128, p. 380; 8 Id. S. I., Vol. 1, 1001, 9; Id. 127, p. 1176. (1) Id. 127, p. 822; Id. 128, 12S, 380. 
(m) Id. 127, p. 270, 1172. (n) Id. 123, p. 330, 336. (o) Id., S. I., Vol. 15. p. 1013. (p) Id. S. 1. 
Vol. 15, p. 792. (q) S. I., Vol. 32, p. 334. (r) Id. 128, p. 3S0, twp. 6 qt., 1003. (s) Id. S. I, 
Vol. 15, p. 884; Id. 127, p 822, 1176. (t) Id. 128, p. 530, 315, 1003. (9) Long's Life of Lee. 
(10) Johnston, p. 322. (T) Taylor's " Four Years with Lee." 



THE WAR. 63 

No one can doubt that these records existed at the time this 
table was made. Had they been published in full in the War 
Records, as Congress directed, this controversy would have been 
avoided, but only detached portions appear. If a party to a 
legal controversy destroys or suppresses evidence important to 
establish his adversary's case, that adversary is permitted to 
introduce secondary evidence. In this matter the Tribune's copy 
of the official returns is the best secondary evidence in existence. 

It is very important, in connection with this Tribune letter, 
to consider the statement of General Cooper, late Adjutant- 
General of the Confederate Army (II So. Hist. Soc. Papers, 
p. 20). He says: "The files of this office, which could best 
afford this information (as to numbers), were carefully boxed 
up and taken on our retreat from Richmond to Charlotte, N. 
C, where they were, unfortunately, captured, and as I learn, 
are now in Washington." These records, therefore, which con- 
tained exact information on this subject, were not destroyed 
by the Confederate authorities, as some Northern writers have 
stated, but on the contrary were captured by the United States 
forces and taken to Washington. Why, then, could not Mr. 
Reid have seen them, as he said he did? And why was he not 
telling the truth when he wrote, "I am enabled to furnish the 
return in every department and for almost every month from 
these official sources. We judge in all 600,000 different men were 
in the Confederate ranks during the war." Why, if Mr. Reid 
is not correct, does not the United States officials publish these 
records, as they have been directed by Congress to do, instead 
of denying their existence? 

Why did the American Cyclopedia (1875), of which Mr. 
Charles A. Dana, late Assistant Secretary of War, quote Gen- 
eral Cooper's statement as to numbers without comment, if these 
records did not sustain him? Dana had been in an official posi- 
tion in which it was his duty to know the numbers in the Con- 
federate armies, and he tacitly admits the truth of Gen. Cooper's 
statement. 

The most far-fetched and unreliable argument on this sub- 
ject made by Northern writers is that drawn from the popu- 
lation of the South, and the assumption that every able-bodied 
man in the South was in the army. 

One writer affirms : "Substantially the whole military pop- 
ulation of the Confederate States was placed under arms." 



64 THE WAR. 

Another writer says (Fox) : "The eleven States of the Southern 
Confederacy had in 1860 a military population of 1,064,193. 
. . . This number was largely supplemented during each 
successive year of the war by those who attained their eighteenth 
year of age, at which time they became liable to military duty." 

Fox (p. 552) estimates the number of youths reaching 
eighteen in four years at 200,000. This we believe to be too 
large, for many families were scattered, many left the Confede- 
racy, and many were cut off by the United States armies. On 
this point it may be well to call attention to the fact that by 
the census report of 1890, the percentage of increase in the 
Southern States was greatly reduced during the decade from 
1860-70. South Carolina, for instance, increased but 0.3 per 
cent., while from 1870 to 1880 the increase was 41.1 per cent. 
The same causes to some extent operated to prevent the acces- 
sions in the military age. 

We have shown that more than one-fourth of the population 
of the Southern Confederacy was cut off during the first year 
of the war by the advance of the United States armies. There- 
fore, if we add to the men of military age in 1861 200,000 of 
those coming of age during the war, making 1,264,193, we 
must deduct one-fourth lost from occupation of the country by 
the enemy, which would leave but 973,145. 

Fox (p. 552) says the exempts, in all countries, on account 
of physical or mental infirmities, constitute one-fifth of the 
military population ; deducting this one-fifth would leave 798,- 
416. We must deduct from this the number of Southern men 
from the States who served in the United States army, which is 
given by Fox at 86,000. This would leave 712,000, to which 
we must add 19,000 men in the Southern army from the border 
States, which would give us men of military age in the South 
731,000. But in addition to this a very large allowance must 
be made for men necessarily occupied in civil government posi- 
tions, manufactories, agriculture, home guards, preachers, doc- 
tors, teachers and skulkers. 

It is a mistake to suppose the whole population of the 
South was in the army. The skulkers were many, to their shame 
be it said. It is impossible to give the number, but a few 
extracts from the War Records will substantiate this statement 
and indicate the extent to which skulking was carried, and the 
inefficiency of the conscript law. General Cobb writes Decern- 



THE WAR. 65 

ber, 1864, from Macon, Ga., to the Secretary of War: "At 
the hazard of incurring the criticism that I have not been equal 
to the duty of enforcing the conscript law in Georgia, I say to 
you that you will never get the men into the service who ought to 
be there through the conscript camp. It would require the whole 
army to enforce the conscript law if the same state of things 
exist throughout the Confederacy as I know is the case in Geor- 
gia and Alabama, and I may add Tennessee." 129 W. R. 964. 

H. W. Walters, writing from Oxford, Miss., to the De- 
partment, December, 1864, says (129 W. R. 976) : "I regard 
the conscript department in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi 
as almost worthless. I believe if the officers and men engaged 
in it were sent to the field more strength would be added to the 
army than will probably be afforded by the conscripts who will 
be sent forward." 

Gen. T. H. Holmes reports to Adjutant-General Cooper 
from Raleigh, N. C, April 29, 1864 : "After a full and com- 
plete conference with Colonel Mallett, commandant of conscrip- 
tions, and on examination of the reports of his enrolling officers 
in different parts of the State, I am pained to report that there 
is much disaffection in many of the counties, which, emboldened 
by the absence of troops, is being organized in some places to 
resist enrolling officers and persecute and prey upon loyal and 
true citizens. At present my orders do not authorize me to act, 
as the reserve force is as yet without organization." And 
General Kemper, in Virginia, reports December 4, 1864 (129 
W. R. 855), that in his belief there were 40,000 men in Virginia 
out of the army between the ages of eighteen and forty-five 
years, and that the returns of the bureau, obviously imperfect 
and partial, shows 28,035 men in the State between eighteen 
and forty-five detailed for all causes. 

A very instructive report, made to the Confederate Secre- 
tary of War in January, 1864, adds much strength to the state- 
ments already given. We find there in six States east of the 
Mississippi, the following: 

Number of exempts from all causes 96,578 

Number deducted owing to disloyalty of parts of States 44,200 

Number unaccounted for (skulkers) 70,294 

Number available for service not in army 126,365 

337,437 



66 



THE WAR. 



If we deduct t his number from the men of military age 
in 1860/92,000 for those who came to eighteen in 
four years in these States we have 805,500 

468,063 
There was in the trans-Mississippi army at that time, 

present and absent 73,289 



541,343 

A Northern writer says : "Conclusive evidence on this 
question (that of numbers in Confederate army) is the record 
of the census of 1890, that there were living 432,020 Confede- 
rates and 980,724 Union soldiers." This statement is not cor- 
rect, though it has been often repeated. 

From the Union numbers have been deducted 53,799 ne- 
groes who were in that army, while 3,273 have been added to the 
Confederate numbers. It is also an interesting fact that at that 
very time the War Department estimated that there were 
1,341,332 living Federal soldiers. That it was incorrect as to 
the enumeration of Southern soldiers, every sane man in America 
knows. A report of the Record and Pension Division of the 
War Department in 1896 says: "It requires but a brief ex- 
amination of the census figures to show that they fall far short 
of representing the total number of survivors (of the United 
States soldiers) in 1890, and they cannot be relied upon as the 
basis of any calculation for the future." 

This census report is instructive, however, as it enables us 
to refute another false statement, to wit: That the South was 
inhuman enough to rob the cradle and the grave for soldiers. 
The report shows that of the surviving veterans of the United 
States army, 12.52 per cent, were less than 45 years of age 
in 1890, or under 20 in 1865. 

Of Confederates, 11.73 per cent, were in 1890 under 45. 

Of the Federals, 1.08 per cent, were over 75 in 1890, or 
50 in 1865. 

Of the Confederates, 1.36 per cent, were over 75 in 1890, 
or over 50 in 1865. 

It therefore follows that the cradle and the grave were 
robbed as frequently by one country as the other, and the cradle 
rather more by the North. 

Dr. D. C. Kelly, in a very able article on this subject, says: 



THE WAR. 67 

"The Confederate Adjutant-General reports soldiers in all the 

Confederate armies January, 1864 481,166 

Now if we add the reported casualties 284,987 

We have total number of enlisted 766,141 

(There can be no doubt that thousands in the casualty column 

were also in the other.) 

"Not only are these estimates the largest valuation that 
Confederate patriotism ought to demand, but the largest also 
that the figures made out by her own officers could allow. . . . 
Let it be distinctly remembered, however, that the reports from 
the field which reached him were reports, not of men in camp 
ready for duty, but of all names found on the regimental ros- 
ters. It is legitimate to throw some light on these reports from 
facts sustained by personal observation. Forrest entered West 
Tennessee November 15, 1863, with upward of 500 men. He 
came out December 31 with 3,500 men. 

"The 3,000 extra men who accompanied Forrest out of 
Tennessee were a very large majority of them trained soldiers 
whose names were on army rosters. Many of them were men 
who had volunteered originally for twelve months, and having 
not been allowed individually the privilege of retiring at the 
end of that time, did not regard themselves deserting. Others 
had been wounded and were allowed to return home. They re- 
mained in hiding among their friends. After the occupancy 
of the country by the Federal forces, others still had gone home 
under the necessity of lending help to their families — a duty 
which seemed to them most urgent. All of these absent from 
their commands were glad to exchange infantry for cavalry 
service, with the pledge that their absence from their various 
regiments would be condoned by attaching themselves to For- 
rest's command. 

"This is but a single example of a class of facts arising 
in all the territory either occupied by the Federal army or as 
laid waste by them, that soldiers with families in such territory 
regarded it as right that they should give personal attention 
to the very existence of those nearest and dearest to them. I 
have no doubt that if we take from the 766,000 reported as 
on the Confederate rolls in 1864 the names of those men who 
were thus duplicated we will make little mistake in accepting 
the estimate of 600,000. Especially would this be true if we 



68 THE WAR. 

sift out the deserters from the conscripts whose names appear 
on the official rolls. These men were chiefly from the mountain 
regions and were safe from any means the Confederates had to 
run them in." 

It may be said in confirmation of this .statement that nearly 
all the men in Mosby's command were borne on the rolls of 
other commands, and it is surprising the extent to which this 
laxity was carried. In a large measure it was due to the lack 
of well-trained regimental officers. 

We cannot better conclude this branch of our subject than 
by giving an extract from an English paper (London Ev. 
Herald) upon the downfall of the Confederacy. 

"The South is doomed. With the surrender of Lee ends, 
not indeed the possibility of military defense, still less that of 
desperate popular resistance, but the hope of final success. 
After four years of war, sustained with a gallantry and reso- 
lution that have few, if any, precedents in history ; after such 
sacrifices as perhaps no nation ever made in vain; after losses 
that have drained the life blood of the country ; after a series of 
brilliant victories, gained under unequalled disadvantage, cour- 
age and skill and devotion have succumbed to brute force ; 
numbers have prevailed over the bravest and most united people 
that ever drew the sword in defence of civil rights and national 
independence. To numbers, and to numbers alone, the North 
owes its triumph. Its advantages in wealth and resources, in 
the possession of the sea and the command of the rivers, were 
neutralized by Southern gallantry. In despite of the most 
numerous navy in the world, half a dozen Southern cruisers 
drove its commerce from the seas. In despite of its overwhelm- 
ing superiority in strength of ships and guns, improvised 
Southern ironclads beat and drove off its blockading squadrons, 
and Southern cavalry embarking on little river steamers, cap- 
tured its armed gunboats. 

"In defiance of all its power, Southern energy contrived 
to supply the armies of the Confederate States with everything 
of which they stood in need. When the war broke out, the North 
had everything of military stores in abundance, and could draw 
unlimited supplies from Europe; the South had scarcely a 
cannon, had but few rifles, still fewer swords or bayonets, and 
not a single foundry or powder factory. All these deficiencies 
were supplied by the foresight of the Confederate government 



THE WAR. 69 

and the daring of the Confederate armies. The routed forces 
of the North supplied artillery and ammunition, rifles and 
bayonets, to the Southerners. The cannon which thundered 
against Gettysburg, the shot which crushed the brave merce- 
naries of Burnside on the slopes above Fredericksburg, came 
for the most part from Northern arsenals. No Southern failure 
is attributed to the want of arms or powder ; no Federal success 
was won by the enormous advantages which the North enjoyed 
in its favor. If their numbers had been equal, long ago would 
the Federal government have taken refuge at Boston or New 
York, and every inch of Southern soil have been free from the 
step of the invader. Numbers, and numbers alone, have de- 
cided the struggle. 

"Almost every battle was won by the South, but every 
Southern victory has been rendered fruitless by the overwhelm- 
ing numerical superiority of the vanquished. The conquerors 
found themselves on every occasion confronted by new armies, 
and deprived of the fruits of victory by the facility with which 
the broken ranks of the enemy were replenished. The smaller 
losses of the South were irreparable. The greater sacrifices of 
the North were of no consequence whatever in the eyes of a 
government which lavished the lives of hired foreign mercenaries 
in the knowledge that money could repair all that folly and 
ferocity might destroy. The South has perished by exhaustion 
— by sheer inability to recruit her exhausted armies." 



CHAPTER IV. 

Reconstruction. 

The war was over. Not an armed organized body of 
Confederates existed from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The 
Supreme Court had held 1 that the Acts of Secession of the 
Southern States were null and void: that these States were and 
always had been States of the Union. The Southern soldier 
had returned to his home resolved to do all in his power to restore 
the ravages of war ; to forget the past and make his country 
great and prosperous. But he forgot that his arch enemies 
still lived; that Charles Sumner still smarted from the sting of 
the lash applied to his back by a South Carolinian ; that Zach 
Chandler still lived, and that he had said when trying to bring- 
on secession and the war "without a little blood-letting the 
country will not be worth a damn," and that oceans of blood 
had not satisfied him ; that Thad Stevens still worked for our 
destruction. War was over, but hate was not dead. 

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court had held that the judi- 
cial branch of the Government would be controlled by the Legis- 
lative and Executive in deciding the question when the war was 
over, and politicians and spoilsmen wished it never to end. 

Mr. Lincoln, from the beginning of the war to the time of 
his death, had proclaimed to the Southern people that the Union 
was all he wished. 2 Return to the Union and give up slavery 
and every other right should be guaranteed. He even advocated 
paying for the slaves. Without these guarantees the war would 
never have ended until every man who wore the gray slept in 
a patriot's grave. But Lincoln was dead ; a weak though honest 
renegade sat in his place, and unbridled hate ruled in Congress. 

The Executive would not place the Southern leaders on trial 
for fear of a too scrupulous judge and jury; but Congress 
proceeded to degrade and destroy a people — a people of their 
own blood and kindred — and to place them in subjection to their 

• Texas v. White, 7 Wal.— 74 U. S. 

2 See proclamations of T863, 1864, 1865. Richardson Messages, etc. of Presidents, 
Vol. VI. 

(70) 



RECONSTRUCTION. 71 

former slaves, members of the most degraded race on earth. 
Thaddeus Stevens, with his negro "housekeeper," of course could 
not appreciate this degradation, but could not impartial North- 
ern white men do so? 

The Acts of Congress known as the Reconstruction Acts 
are recorded in United States Statutes at Large 14, 15 and 16, 
at pages 428, 73, 416 respectively, and should be read by 
every patriotic American citizen, for they will arouse his right- 
eous' indignation. The veto message of Andrew Johnson, Re- 
publican President of the United States, who, though an aboli- 
tionist and a Southern renegade, wrote a paper that is an honor 
to himself and his country. 1 Of course his facts, logic and law 
were of no avail ; the decree had gone forth — the South was to 
be degraded, ruined and enslaved — and the measures became law 
notwithstanding the President's veto, to the eternal disgrace of 
that American Congress. 

"I have examined the bill 'to provide for the more efficient 
government of the rebel States' with the care and anxiety which 
its transcendant importance is calculated to awaken. I am 
unable to give it my assent, for reasons so grave that I hope a 
statement of them may have some influence on the minds of the 
patriotic and enlightened men with whom the decision ultimately 
rests. The bill places all the people of the ten States therein 
named under the absolute dominion of military rulers ; and the 
preamble undertakes to give the reason upon which the measure 
is based and the ground upon which it is justified. It declares 
that there exists in these States no legal government and no 
adequate protection for life or property, and asserts the neces- 
sity of enforcing peace and good order within their limits. Is 
this true as matter of fact? 

"It is not denied that the States in question have each 
of them an actual government with all the powers — executive, 
judicial and legislative — which properly belong to a free State. 
They are organized like the other States of the Union, and, 
like them, they make, administer and execute *he laws which 
concern their domestic affairs. . . . 

"The provision which these governments have made for 
the preservation of order, the suppression of crime, and the 
redress of private injuries, are in substance and principle the 
same as those which prevail in the Northern States and in other 

> Messages of the Presidents, Vol. VI, 498. 



72 RECONSTRUCTION. 

civilized countries. They certainly have not succeeded in pre- 
venting the commission of all crime, nor has this been accom- 
plished anywhere in the world. . . . But that these people 
are maintaining local governments for themselves which habitu- 
ally defeat the objects of all government and render their own 
lives and property insecure is in itself utterly improbable, and 
the averment of the bill to that effect is not supported by any 
evidence which has come to my knowledge. All the information 
I have on the subject convinces me that the masses of the South- 
ern people and those who control their public acts, while they 
entertain diverse opinions on questions of Federal policy, are 
completely united in the effort to reorganize their society on the 
basis of peace and to restore their mutual prosperity as rapidly 
and as completely as their circumstances will permit. The bill, 
however, would seem to show upon its face that the establishment 
of peace and good order is not its real object. The fifth section 
declares that the preceding sections shall cease to operate in any 
State where certain events shall have happened. These events 
are first . . . (Here they are given, substantially the 
enfranchisement of the negroes and the disfranchisement of the 
whites.) . . . The military rule which it establishes is plainly 
to be used, not for any purpose of order, or for the prevention 
of crime, but solely as a means of coercing the people into the 
adoption of principles and measures to which it is known that 
they are opposed, and upon which they have an undeniable right 
to exercise their own judgment. I submit to Congress whether 
this measure is not in its whole character, scope and object, 
without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict 
with the plainest provisions of the Constitution, and utterly 
destructive to those great principles of liberty and humanity 
for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed 
so much blood and expended so much treasure. 

"The ten States named in the bill are divided into five 
districts. For each district an army officer, not below the rank 
of a brigadier general, is to be appointed to rule over the people ; 
and he is to be supported with an efficient military force to 
enable him to perform his duties and enforce his authority. . . . 
The power thus given to the commanding officer over all the 
people of each district is that of an absolute monarch. His 
mere will is to take the place of all law. The law of the State 
is now the only rule applicable to the subject placed under his 



RECONSTRUCTION. 73 

control, and that is completely displaced by the clause which 
declares all interference of State authority to be null and void. 
He alone is permitted to determine what is rights of person 
or property, and he may protect them in such way as in his 
discretion may seem proper. Being beyond State law, and there 
being no other law to regulate the subject, he may make a 
criminal code of his own ; and he can make it as bloody as any 
recorded in history, or he can reserve the privilege of acting 
upon the impulse of his private passions in each case that 
arises. He is bound by no rules of evidence; there is, indeed, 
no provision by which he is authorized or required to take any 
evidence at all. Everything is a crime which he chooses to call 
so, and all persons are condemned whom he pronounces to be 
guilty. He is not bound to keep any record or make any report 
of his proceedings. He may arrest his victims wherever he 
finds them, without warrant, accusation or proof of probable 
cause. If he gives them a trial before he inflicts the punishment, 
he gives it of his grace and mercy, not because he is commanded 
to do so. 

. . . "It is plain that the authorit}^ here given to the 
military officer amounts to absolute despotism. But to make 
it still more unendurable, the bill provides that it may be dele- 
gated to as many subordinates as he chooses to appoint, for 
it declares that he shall 'punish or cause to be punished.' Such 
power has not been wielded by any monarch in England for 
more than five hundred years. In all that time no people who 
speak the English language have borne such servitude. It re- 
duces the whole population of the ten States — all persons of 
every color, sex and condition, and every stranger within their 
limits — to the most abject and degrading slavery. No master 
ever had a control so absolute over the slaves as this bill gives 
to the military officer over both white and colored persons. . . . 

"This is a bill passed by Congress in time of peace. There 
is not in any one of the States brought under its operation 
either war or insurrection. The laws of the State and of the 
Federal Government are all in undisturbed and harmonious 
operation. The courts, State and Federal, are open and in the 
full exercise of their proper authority. Over every State com- 
prised in these five military districts, life, liberty and property 
are secured by State laws, and the national Constitution is 
everywhere in force and everywhere obeyed. . . . 



74 RECONSTRUCTION. 

"The United States is bound to guarantee to each State a 
republican form of government. Can it be pretended that this 
obligation is not palpably broken if we carry out a measure 
like this, which wipes away every vestige of republican govern- 
ment in ten States and puts the life, property, liberty and honor 
of all the people in each of them under the dominion of a single 
person clothed with unlimited authority? 

"The Parliament of England, exercising the omnipotent 
power which it claimed, was accustomed to pass bills of at- 
tainder ; that is to say, it would convict men of treason and 
crimes by legislative enactment. . . . The fathers of our 
country determined that no such thing should occur here. They 
withheld the power from Congress, and thus forbade its exer- 
cise by that body, and they provided in the Constitution that no 
State should pass any bill of attainder. It is, therefore, im- 
possible for any person in this country to be constitutionally 
convicted or punished for any crime by a legislative proceeeding 
of any sort. Nevertheless, here is a bill of attainder against 
9,000,000 people at once. It is based upon an accusation so 
vague as to be scarcely intelligible, and found to be true upon 
no credible evidence. No one of the 9,000,000 was heard in 
his own defence. The representatives of the doomed parties 
were excluded from all participation in the trial. The convic- 
tion is to be followed by the most ignominious punishment ever 
inflicted on large masses of men. It disfranchises them by hun- 
dreds of thousands and degrades them all, even those who are 
admitted to be guiltless, from the rank of freemen to the con- 
dition of slaves. 

"The purpose and object of the bill — the general intent 
which pervades it from beginning to end — is to change the en- 
tire structure and character of the State governments and to 
compel them by force to the adoption of organic laws and 
regulations which they are unwilling to accept if left to them- 
selves. The negroes have not asked for the privilege of voting ; 
the vast majority of them have no idea what it means. This 
bill not only thrusts it into their hands, but compels them, as 
well as the whites, to use it in a particular way. If they do 
not form a constitution with prescribed articles in it and after- 
wards elect a legislature which will act upon certain measures 
in a prescribed way, neither blacks nor whites can be relieved 
from the slavery which the bill imposes upon them. Without 



RECONSTRUCTION. 75 

pausing here to consider the policy or impolicy of Africanizing 
the southern part of our territory, I would simply ask the atten- 
tion of Congress to that manifest, well known and universally 
acknowledged rule of constitutional law which declares that the 
Federal Government has no jurisdiction, authority or power to 
regulate such subjects for any State. To force the right of 
suffrage out of the hands of the white people and into the hands 
of the negroes is an arbitrary violation of this principle. The 
bill also denies the legality of the government of ten of the 
States which participated in the ratification of the amendment 
to the Federal Constitution abolishing slavery forever within the 
jurisdiction of the United States, and practically excludes them 
from the Union. If this assumption of the bill be correct, their 
concurrence cannot be considered as having been legally given 
and the important fact is made to appear that the consent of 
three-fourths of the State — the requisite number — has not been 
constitutionally obtained to the ratification of that amendment, 
thus leaving the question of slavery where it stood before the 
amendment was officially declared to have become a part of the 
Constitution. 



"In the first place, it is the only system of free government 
which we can hope to have as a nation. When it ceases to be 
the rule of our conduct, we may perhaps take our choice between 
complete anarchy, a consolidated despotism, and a total disso- 
lution of the Union ; but national liberty regulated by law will 
have passed beyond our reach. 



"Those who advocated the right of secession alleged in 
their own justification that we had no regard for law and that 
their rights of property, life and liberty would not be safe 
under the Constitution as amended by us. If we now verify 
their assertion, we prove that they were in truth and in fact 
fighting for their liberty, and instead of branding their leaders 
with the dishonoring name of traitors against a righteous gov- 
ernment, we elevate them in history to the rank of self-sacrific- 
ing patriots, consecrate them to the admiration of the world, 
and place them by the side of Washington, Hampden, and 
Sidney. No, let us leave them to the infamy they deserve, 



76 RECONSTRUCTION. 

punish them as they should be punished, according to law, and 
take upon ourselves no share of the odium which they bear 
alone." 

It is needless to say they did take the odium upon them- 
selves — they did elevate the Southern soldier to the rank of the 
heroes of the world — for they passed this odious and unconsti- 
tutional act over this veto, and desolation and ruin followed. 

Several attempts were made to carry the question of the 
validity of the Reconstruction Acts to the Supreme Court of the 
United States for adjudication, and when at last it reached 
that Court, while the Court had it under advisement, Congress 
by an Act passed over the President's veto, deprived the Court 
of jurisdiction of such cases. It actually feared the action of 
its own servile court — a court which had, since the death of 
Taney, never failed them. 

The result of this legislation was even worse than Mr. 
Johnson predicted. It cannot be better described than it has 
been by a recent writer. He says: "The slave had been made 
the ruler of his former master, who was disfranchised and dis- 
armed. The hand of the thief and ruffian clutched at every 
man's throat. The negroes controlled the State, county, city 
and town governments. Their insolence grew apace. Their 
women were taught to insult their old mistresses and mock their 
poverty as they passed in their faded dresses. A black driver 
in a town near mine struck a white child with a whip, and when 
the mother protested, she was arrested by a negro policeman 
and fined ten dollars by a negro magistrate for insulting a 
freedman. Thieves looted the treasury of every State and coun- 
ty and taxes mounted until as many as twenty-nine hundred 
homesteads of white men, many of whom could not vote, were 
sold for taxes in a single county. The negro and his ally, the 
carpet-bag adventurer, had attained undisputed control of 
society through the secret oath-bound order known as the 'Union 
League.' 

"The white people of the South at first scouted the idea 
that the negro, who had been faithful through the war, could 
now be used as their deadliest foe in the new order of society. 
But for the signs, grips, passwords and mysterious blue flaming- 
altar of the 'Union League,' the whites could have held the 

Why is the Solid South? Herbert, pp. 25-27. 
Dixion in Metropolitan Magazine, Sept. 1903, p. 658. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 77 

friendship of their former slaves. As a rule, the ties which 
bound them were based on real affection. But the League did 
its work well. By promises to the negroes of forty acres of 
the land of their former masters, linked with the wildest theories 
of equality with those who once ruled them, by drill in arms 
and the backing of trained garrisons, a gulf between the white 
man and the negro was dug which time can never bridge. Its 
passions have become part of the very heart-beat of both races." 
Such was the result of reconstruction— the return of the 
men of Bunker Hill to those of Virginia and the Carohnas, 
whose ancestors marched those hundreds of weary miles to assist 
them in their struggle for liberty. 

But the men of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg could never 
submit to such a yoke. "As the young German patriots of 
1812 organized their struggle for liberty under the nose of the 
garrison of Napoleon, so these daring men, girt by thousands 
of bayonets, within a few months had brought order out of 
chaos. The triumph which they achieved was one of incredible 
grandeur. They snatched power out of defeat and death, and 
turned the fruits of victory from twenty millon conquerors. 
Such achievements have never been wrought by arrant ruffians, 
scoundrels and desperadoes. The sheer moral grandeur of such 
a deed gives the lie to the assertion." The names of these 
Southern heroes will forever be coupled on the pages of history 
with those of the world's greatest patriots— as Mr. Johnson 
said, with those of Hampden, Sidney and Washington— while 
those of Sumner, Stanton and Stevens can only be associated 
in the historv of the English people with that of Jeffreys. 

Curry says "Horrors of Reconstruction" is no exaggerated 
phrase. Duplicity, ignorance, superstition, pauperism, fraud, 
robbery, venality, were in ascendant, made and kept so by Acts 
of Congress." Mr. Pike, a former Republican member of Con- 
fess from Maine, in "The Prostrate States," speaks of the 
military government of South Carolina in 1867 as a "carnival 
of crime and corruption; the most ignorant democracy that 
mankind ever saw invested with the functions of government," 
and characterizes the vileness of the State government by such 
terms as "morass of rottenness," "huge system of brigandage," 
"wholesale bribery of members." The last administration stole 
right and left with a recklessness and audacity without parallel. 
"Better work," says Dr. Curry, "was never done for the 



78 RECONSTRUCTION. 

negroes than in defeating the polic}' and purposes of 'Recon- 
struction.' But for the successful resistance to ignorance, super- 
stition, fanaticism, knavery, the grossest executive, judicial and 
legislative outrages, there would today be no schools for the ne- 
gro at the South, no protection to property, no loyaltv to the 
Unoin." 

In the words of Alex. A. H. Stevens, "a comparison between 
the acts of the two governments during the whole conduct of the 
war, will forever clearly exhibit on which side in the contest was 
the higher standard of moral ideas ; and with it the higher type 
of civilization." 



Some Inconsistencies of the Republican Party in its 
Dealings with the South. 

These are too numerous to be mentioned and would not be 
referred to but for the fact that they are in almost every in- 
stance violations of law, and of the highest law, the Constitu- 
tion. To commence at the beginning of this part of their history 
we must refer to the Chicago platform of 1860. This clearly 
declares the right of "one people to dissolve the political bonds 
which have connected them with another," and this is but a repe- 
tition of Lincoln's speech in the House of Representatives on the 
independence of Texas. 

Notwithstanding that declaration, when the South sepa- 
rated by an almost unanimous vote of its people, the Republican 
party levied war upon them, conquered them and treated them 
as a conquered people, denying them every right known to 
constitutional and human law, the principles claimed in the 
Republican platform for our slaves, and carried out the dictates 
of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens when he said : "I would treat the 
South as a conquered country and settle it political!}' upon the 
policy best suited to ourselves." 



Lincoln in his inaugural address said to the South: "The 
Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict with- 
out being yourselves the aggressors." 

Within ninety days he had marched his armies into the 
Southern States and become the aggressor. 

Southern States in American Union, p. 23. "Solid South," Herbert, pp. 25-27. 
" The Prostrate States," Pike. " Calhoun," Lamar, p. 71. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 79 

On the 22d of July* 1861, the House of Representatives 
passed a resolution denying "any purpose of conquest or subju- 
gation," but affirmed that the war was waged to preserve the 
Union with all the dignity, equality and the rights of the States 
unimpaired, and that so soon as these objects were accomplished 
the war ought to cease. In 1867, March 2, the President of 
the United States said that the war was over, that not a vestige 
of hostility to the Government remained ; but Congress passed an 
act to the effect "That said Rebel States shall be divided into 
military districts and made subject to the military authority of 
the United States as hereinafter provided." (14 Stat, at Large 
428.) The Constitution of the United States (Art. II, sec. 1) 
provides that "Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the 
Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the 
whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State 
may be entitled in Congress." The Supreme Court held (in 
Texas v. White, 7 Wal.) that the Southern States had never 
left the Union, but were after the war still States of the Union, 
and its citizens still citizens of the United States. But Con- 
gress, by Act of February 8, 1865 (13 Stat, at Large, 568) 
provided: "That the States mentioned in the preamble of this 
resolution (the Southern States) are not entitled to representa- 
tion in the electoral college." . . . And they were not so 
represented. Could there be a clearer violation of law or of the 
nation's word? 

The Supreme Court of the United States had said : "The pro- 
visions of the United States Constitution, in relation to the per- 
sonal rights and privileges of a citizen, do not embrace the ne- 
gro African race in this country at the time of its adoption or 
who might afterwards be imported who had then been or should 
afterwards be made free in any State." 

" The descendants of Africans who were imported into this 
country and sold as slaves, when emancipated, or who are born 
of parents who had become free before their birth, are not citi- 
zens of a State in the sense in which the word is used in the U. S. 
Constitution." (19 Howard, U. S. Supreme Court Reports, 
393). 

The Supreme Court in 16 Wallace, 36, holds that the ne- 
groes become citizens under the 14th and 15th amendments. 

Under the Reconstruction Acts of Congress a large part of 
the whites of the South were disfranchised and the negroes en- 



80 RECONSTRUCTION. 

franchised. These acts were unconstitutional and void, and 
therefore the negroes at the South voted illegally ; in fact at that 
very time every negro at the South was a slave, for Mr. Lincoln's 
proclamation of emancipation was unconstitutional and therefore 
null and void. And if the Southern States were not States in 
1865 they could not consent to the 13th amendment, and Con- 
gress could not have declared they were not States. What, then, 
is the effect of these conditions? The 13th, 14th and 15th 
amendments to the Constitution could not have been adopted but 
with the vote of the Southern States, for without this vote the 
necessary two-thirds of the States (Art. II., Sec. 2, of the Con- 
stitution) was not given for the amendments. But these States 
only consented by the vote of the negroes, who only became citi- 
zens and acquired the right to vote by these amendments. 
(Southern States in the American Union. Curry, p. 219). 



The Chicago Republican platform of I860 declared "That 
the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and espe- 
cially the right of each State to order and control its own domes- 
tic institutions according to its own judgment, exclusively, is 
essential to that balance of power on which the performance of 
our political fabric depends." 

Need I summarize the cases of violation of this statement 
of "principles"? The whole life of the Republican party, its 
every act, has been a violation of it. 



If Bledsoe, Herndon and Lamon, and others of Lincoln's 
friends are to be believed, and there can be no doubt of the truth 
of their statements, Lincoln was an avowed infidel. Is it aught 
than sacrilege, and does it not stamp him as a blasphemous hyp- 
ocrite, when he used the following language? "Whereas it is 
fit and becoming in all people at all times to acknowledge and re- 
vere the supreme government of God, to bow in humble submis- 
sion to His chastisements, to confess and deplore their sins and 
transgressions in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom, and to pray with all fervor and contri- 
tion for the pardon of their past offences and for a blessing upon 
their present and prospective actions." (Proclamation, Aug. 
12, 1861.) 



RECONSTRUCTION. 81 

The South has no apology to make for her acts in the past, 
she thought she was right in 1861 and now knows she was right. 
If time, truth, reason, justice and law, stand for anything, his- 
tory can give no other verdict. The South is proud of her cause, 
proud of her people, proud of her leaders, their wisdom and de- 
votion. They are the peers of any that ever lived. The lead- 
ers of the North sink into insignificance by comparison. Can 
Lincoln compare with Davis ; Grant with Lee ; McClellan with 
Jackson; Sherman with Johnson; Sheridan with Stewart? The 
unanimous verdict of the world answers No. Even the Northern 
General Piatt says: "The shadow of Lee's surrendered sword 
gives renown to an otherwise unknown grave" — Grant's! 

Thirty-five years have passed since the Reconstruction 
ended. Thirty-five years of struggle and deprivation to the 
Southern people, but today we are the most prosperous and 
contented section of the country. Standing in the grounds of 
the late Confederate capital, not long ago, a Republican Presi- 
dent of the United States, the successor to Lincoln, pronounced 
this eulogy upon the Southern soldiers and people, and at last 
we can say justice will be done us, our leaders, and our country. 
Mr. Roosevelt said: 

"Great though the need of praise is which is due the South 
for the soldierly valor her sons displayed during the four years 
of war, I think that even greater praise is due to her for what 
her people have accomplished in the forty years of peace which 
followed. For forty years the South has made not merely a 
courageous, but at times a desperate struggle, as she has striven 
for moral and material well-being. Her success has been extra- 
ordinary, and all citizens of our common country should feel joy 
and pride in it ; for any great deed done or any fine qualities 
shown by one group of Americans of necessity reflects credit 
upon all Americans. 

"Only a heroic people could have battled successfully 
against the conditions with which the people of the South found 
themselves face to face at the end of the Civil War. There had 
been utter destruction and disaster, and wholly new business and 
social problems had to be faced with the scantiest means. The 
economic and political fabric had to be readjusted in the midst of 
dire want, of grinding poverty. The future of the broken, war- 
swept South seemed beyond hope, and if her sons and daughters 
had been of weaker fibre there would in very truth have been no 






82 RECONSTRUCTION. 

hope. But the men and the sons of men who had faced with un- 
faltering front every alternation of good and evil fortune from 
Manassas to Appomattox, and the women, their wives and mo- 
thers, whose courage and endurance had reached an even higher 
heroic level — these men and these women set themselves undaunt- 
edly to the great task before them. For twenty years the 
struggle was hard and at times doubtful. Then the splendid 
qualities of your manhood and womanhood told, as they were 
bound to tell, and the wealth of your extraordinary natural re- 
sources began to be shown. 

" Now the teeming riches of mine and field and factory at- 
test the prosperity of those who are all the stronger because of 
the trials and struggles through which this prosperity has come. 
You stand loyally to your traditions and memories : you also 
stand loyally for our great common country of today and for 
our common flag, which symbolizes all that is brightest and most 
hopeful for the future of mankind ; you face the new age in the 
spirit of the age. Alike in your material and in your spiritual 
and intellectual development you stand abreast of the foremost 
in the world's progress." 

But he is a poor reader of history if he does not know that 
but for the President's party there would have been, during the 
past fifty years, but one flag, one country, one people. 

The same man has said : "The world has never seen better 
soldiers than those who followed Lee, and that leader will un- 
doubtedly rank as without any exception the very greatest of all 
great captains that the English speaking people have brought 
forth." 

Such is the record of the Republican party. History must 
decree it sectional, unpatriotic, and blood thirsty, without any 
regard for law or justice. 









\6BABV 



0? 



CO' 




0^2 



026 



597 



% 



